Schedule
Release 2021.009 will be deployed
- To staging sites, Tuesday, May 4th
- To production sites, Monday, May 10th
- To enterprise sites, Monday, May 17th
APIv2 Improvements
This release includes some helpful enhancements to the Vanilla API:
Get a user's list of badges via the API
You can now use the /api/v2/users/{ID}/badges endpoint to retrieve the set of badges a specific user has earned.
Get user's reaction counts and associated posts via the API
We have added a new reactionsReceived expand option to our /api/v2/users endpoint to allow you to get a breakdown of how other users are reacting to a specific community member.
To complement this, we have also added the /api/v2/users/{ID}/reacted endpoint to allow you to get a user's posts filtered by the reactions they've received. For example, I can find all posts I have published that have been considered "Insightful."
Filter discussions by resolved status
A new parameter has been added to the /api/v2/discussions endpoint to allow you to filter discussions by their resolved or unresolved status.
If you are using Vanilla's Resolved Discussions 2 add-on you are able to mark discussions as "Resolved" when you, or your team members comment on a user's post.
Users of this plugin can leverage the resolved parameter on the API to get their list of discussions filtered by their resolved status:
- Set this to
true to get all Resolved Discussions - Set this to
false to get all Unresolved Discussions
New Badges Component for User Profiles
When using our Badges add-on, you will see a Badges section on user profiles. This component features the set of badges the user has earned throughout their community membership. Release 2021.009 introduces a new and improved badge component in our Foundation themes. This is a more compact view of the badge list, that's been designed to maximize the space, and improve the profile layout.
By default, you will see up to 20 badges, and these are ordered by recency. If the user has earned more than 20 badges, a "View All" link will appear, allowing you to pull up a modal showcasing all badges the user has earned.
Improvements to Akismet Spam Checks
This release includes an update to our Akismet plugin. This plugin checks all new posts and edits for Spam content. If Spam is detected, posts are removed and sent to the Moderation Queue for approval, or deletion.
Previously, you were required to manually Verify users you trusted to allow them to bypass this step, including all Community Managers, Administrators or Staff Members.
With this release, we've introduced an update that allows users with the Moderation.Manage permission to bypass Akismet Spam checks without requiring the added Verified flag. This means your Moderation team is now automatically exempt from Akismet Spam checks.
Now, when posts are added or edited:
- Akismet will first check the author or editor's permissions for the Moderation.Manage permission.
- If the user does not have this permission, Akismet will then look for the Verified flag.
- If the user does not have the appropriate permissions and is not verified, Akismet will check the content for potential spam.
Page Speed Improvement
This release should see a small improvement in page speed metrics. We've reduced our total javascript size by ~25% with further improvements planned.
Additionally, various assets managed by our Frontend Build System now benefit from better Long Term and persistent caching. This means that javascript and CSS files in the system are no longer cleared from caches on when new releases and fixes are deployed. As a result infrequently changed assets will have a lesser impact on perceived page load times for users frequently visiting sites.
Additionally, many images are now loaded lazily. This means images off-screen will not be loaded until a user's browser determines they will need it. This will be particularly helpful on communities that frequently post images in their discussions and comments.
Bug Fixes & Improvements
