Fraenkiman and DeltaLima want to organize a FlatPress community meetup in Berlin at the end of March. This is a great opportunity to meet “your” coders and other FlatPress users.
Update 2024-03-02:
The meetup will will take place on March 23rd from 8pm at c-base, Rungestraße 20!
The c-base is located directly next to the river Spree in the city center of Berlin. Nearby is the S-Bahn and U-Bahn station Jannowitzbrücke and the bus stop of the same name.
Bring your ideas, questions and suggestions, and have a great time talking to other FlatPressers, solve your plugin or theme issues and get inspiration for your FlatPress blog.
If you happen to be in the area at that time, please let us know on the Support Forum:
https://forum.flatpress.org/viewtopic.php?t=716
All the best,
Arvid
Image credits:
“Moscow, Borisovo Ponds, Blue sky with clouds, Russia” by Vyacheslav Argenberg, published under CC-BY 4.0.
“Berlin Silhouette Skyline Art Drawing - Clipart - SVG / PNG / PDF / WMF” by GDJ, published under CC0.
Hi folks, thank you very much for your patience regarding the release of the next FlatPress version. We’ve come a long way, especially the upgrade of the Smarty template engine created a lot of issues.
But the effort was worth it: Today I can proudly announce the start of our first beta test of the upcoming FlatPress 1.3 “Andante”!
The name “Andante” may be seen as a (not entirely serious) allusion to the FlatPress release cycle: We’re not going particularly fast, but steadily we’re going.
Most important improvement of the new version is the PHP 8.1 and 8.2 PHP 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3* compatibility. Also, we added a few helpful plugins and fixed tons of bugs and security issues. And check out all the other improvements like the localized installer!
Please see the Beta 1 release on GitHub to find the detailed change log, a download package and an update package from FlatPress 1.2:
This is a beta version - we strongly recommend not using it in your productive blog yet.
If you want to help testing, please see this topic on the FlatPress support forum.
I explicitly want to thank all the coders, translators and testers who helped creating this new version. FlatPress 1.3 wouldn’t be possible without you! (Cheers, Frank and Matthias! 👋)
See the contributors list to learn about all those great people!
All the best,
Arvid
* Update 2024-01-23: In fact, FlatPress 1.3 “Andante” will happily run under PHP up to 8.3 :)
Hey folks, quite some time has passed since the release of our last FlatPress version 1.2.1. And often the obvious question has been asked: “When will FlatPress 1.3 finally be released?”
Today, I’d like to give you an overview over the current status of development.
tl;dr: FlatPress 1.3 is almost ready, but a few annoying problems are still holding us back from releasing it. We ask for your help.
Even if you haven’t necessarily noticed it, a lot has happened since the last FlatPress release. As of today, we count 424 GitHub commits to be precise :)
Reading through the change log, you’ll find a lot of changes, fixes and additions. I want to highlight the most important ones:
If you’re curious, feel free to get the latest development version, it’s currently named “FlatPress 1.3.dev”. The “dev” is not silent - it stands for “do not update your productive blog, some things might not work properly yet!”. But there’s absolutely nothing to be said against installing it in another folder of your web server to take a peek at the cool new features of FlatPress 1.3! After all, removing it afterwards is as simple as deleting this folder.
There a still a few open issues, we gather them in a milestone on GitHub. Some of them are real blockers for the release of FlatPress 1.3 - we can’t ship as long as the contact form is not working, or saving entries is not possible under some circumstances. Also, the RSS feed delivers raw BBCode, which simply has to be fixed. Most of these issues relate to the Smarty update.
Greatest limiting factor is, no surprise, the developers’ spare time. Especially the Smarty issues are quite challenging and require more than one or two single hours of debugging.
So if you like to support us there, we’d appreciate any help!
So this is the current FlatPress 1.3 development status. Of course, we’ll keep you up to date whenever there’s something new. Make sure to follow the FlatPress accounts on Mastodon or Twitter, and subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed.
Keep blogging happily!
All the best,
Arvid
Image: Slightly cropped “Coding Javascript” by Christiaan Colen - licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
From now on, the FlatPress support forum supports Two Factor Authentication (2FA). (For more information on what’s 2FA, see below.)
Feel free to secure your account!
Activating it is quite easy: Go to the User Control Panel, tab “Two Factor Authentication”. Select “OTP” and hit “Add new key”.
Your OTP secret and a QR code are being generated. (The QR code basically contains the secret.)
Scan the code with your OTP app or enter the secret manually.
Read the OTP from your OTP app and enter it in the “OTP key” field. Hit “Register new key”, and 2FA is activated for your account! From now on, you’ll need to enter the current OTP code after giving your username and password.
Of course, you can disable 2FA at any time by simply deleting the registered keys.
Two Factor Authentication (2FA) with Time-based One-Time Passwords (TOTP) is a great way to protect your user accounts on any platform providing it. It basically means you do not only need your username and password to login, but also a 6-digit code freshly generated every 30 seconds e.g. in the OTP app on your mobile device.
So even if your username and password get stolen (via phishing, keylogging, social engineering, … you name it), your account can still not be accessed without knowing the 6-digit OTP code (which changes every 30 seconds).
This massive increase in security comes with a price, though: Without your OTP generator (i.e., the OTP app on your mobile or any other program capable of generating the code), you will be not able to access your account. But fear not, a good OTP implementation will provide you with static backup codes you can use instead. Of course, nobody else than you should ever get those backup codes, so keep them well :)
2FA is a widely spread standard. Some examples: Amazon offers it, PayPal does, GitHub and Twitter as well. My personal recommendation: Try it, get used to using it, and activate it on any platform that provides it.
There may be countless TOTP generators out there. My recommendations are:
If you have questions regarding 2FA or want to share opinions or recommendations, please feel free to do so on the FlatPress support forum.
All the best,
Arvid
Hi folks,
over the last few years, some of you have asked me how they could send me a small donation to recognize my efforts on the FlatPress project.
This means a lot to me, not for the money, but for your gratitude.
I’ve finally managed to set up a PayPal account and a SEPA bank account for this - so if you want to send a little “Thank you”, feel free to do so now:
Thanks a lot to all of you!
Arvid