KickApps Platform Updates 4.3.10 - Release Notes

by Mike, Thursday, October 29 2009, 05:14 PM by

On Friday October 30 at 3am EST, we released version 4.3.10 of our platform. This release contains new features, enhancements to existing features and bug fixes. Below are the new features and enhancements.

Media Privacy

This is an optional feature that you can enable in the Affiliate Center on the Configure > Settings > Site Settings page. If you enable this feature, when members upload media into your community they will be able to specify that it can only be seen by their friends in the community.

 

  • Private media will be visible to their friends (only!) in the “Photos” module on their profile page.
  • Private media will not be included in general site searches, and it will not be available in the generally-available RSS feeds for your site.
  • Private media cannot be added to Groups. 
  • Private media will not be viewable if an unauthorized user tries to access it directly by entering the URL of the private item into their web browser.
  • Members will be able to see their own private media by navigating to the My Home > My Media section of your community.
  • Updates about private media (including comments left by other people, favorites, tags, etc) will not be included in the Community Activity Feed, Group Activity Feed or Member Activity Feed.
  • Updates about private media will be included in the My Friends and My News feed for appropriate members. (Members will only see updates about media items that they have permission to see).
  • Updates about private media are included in the community activity feed in the Affiliate Center.
  • As the administrator of the community, you will be able to see all private media in the Affiliate Center on the Manage > Media page. (There is a new column in the search results section which identifies any private media in your system.)
  • As the administrator of the community you will be able to optionally include private media in the RSS feeds that you create in the Feed Builder (in the Advanced Filters section).

Full Member Export

When you search your member database in the Affiliate Center on the Manage > Members page, there is a link at the bottom of the page to export the search results as an Excel file. This exported file now contains the entire list of members returned by your search, rather than just the 25 members that appear on the search results page you are viewing. The export also includes a bunch of new database fields for each user, like the answers to all of their profile questions and the number of points they have accumulated to date.


SPAM Defense

In this release we have included a number of methods to combat SPAM (some of which we can publish,  here):

  • All user-generated hyperlinks will now be passed through a server-side redirector. To SPAMMERS this means that they will no longer get any “SEO juice” from of SPAMMING your site with hyperlinks pointing to their “Free Viagra” sites. (Note: in the Affiliate Center on the Configure > Settings > Site Settings page there is a Member Privacy section where you also have the option to display a warning message to your users, whenever they click on a user-generated hyperlink which links to a page outside of your community.)
  • In the Affiliate Center in the Member Blacklist section of the Manage > Members page, you are now able to specify a range of IP addresses (instead of a list of single IP addresses) in order to block unwanted people from joining your community and littering it with SPAM.  We also maintain a list of “known bad guys” on KickDeveloper. Check out this URL to see which IP addresses we recommend that you block:  http://www.kickdeveloper.com/api/index.php/Disable_a_Member
  • In the Affiliate Center on the Configure > Pages > Member Profile Options page, you can now disable your members’ ability to add their own RSS feeds and external links to their profiles.
  • KickApps now has a global “nuke” function which allows us to quickly disable any members (and their contributions) who are suspected of spamming multiple sites on the KickApps platform.  We are rolling out more centralized anti-spam tools behind the scenes, so you will start to see SPAMMY accounts and media being disabled without any action required on your part. At the same time, you should encourage your users to flag inappropriate content (and members) because our centralized intelligence uses that data to quickly identify SPAMMERS.

Faster “AJAX-Powered” Profile Page (optional)

In the Affiliate Center on the Configure > Pages > Member Profile Options page, you can choose to use a faster-performing version of the Profile page which draws the key “above the fold” elements onto the page during its initial load, and the remaining “below the fold” sections as an AJAX call as soon as the page has rendered for the user. We strongly urge all of our customers to choose this option.


Pending Messages Now Visible on All Pages

A notification of your users’  “unread messages” now appears just below the global “site navigation strip” throughout your community, so it is always visible. Previously this info was only available on the MyHome page.


Preview The New App Studio (Beta)

If you haven’t already checked it out, the Beta version of the new App Studio can be accessed through the Affiliate Center on the App Studio > Widget Studio page by clicking the big green button just above the “component dock” (or you can click this link: http://www.kickdeveloper.com/appstudio/preview/) We are only a couple of weeks away from releasing this new interface to the world, and your feedback counts! Enhancements include:

  • Overall new design: more space, consistent configuration options across all widgets
  • Plug-ins: extend the core functionality of your widgets by uploading your own App Studio components.  Keep your plug-ins internal for use in your organization, or work with us to make them available to all KickApps customers.
  • Adobe Open Source Media Framework (OSMF) video player complete with support for OSMF plug-ins.  Tick off plug-in checkboxes to add sophisticated functionality to your OSMF video player, including Akamai streaming support and VAST ads. More plug-ins coming soon.
  • New advanced color picker: way more colors.
  • Usability enhancements to assist with component positioning, sizing, and alignment.

 

Update to How We "Sanitize" Blog Text Submitted Via API's

Going forward, we are not going to "sanitize" any of the text text that is submitted via the Add/Edit Blog Post API call. That means that whatever the client application submits to our API is exactly what we will store in the database.  We do not sanitize the content or encode it this content. In the future we will be adding a global parameter that will allow affiliates to specify if they want us to do the sanitization of content on our side.

This change now allows HTML to be successfully uploaded via the blog upload API.  One thing to keep in mind is that this change could allow users to upload dangerous content, such as script tags.  If this is a problem, you must ensure that the content is handled on the client side. Here are some sample options you may want to explore:

 

API Documentation Available on KickDeveloper

For those who didn't know, in addition to providing a fully-hosted front end for all of our applications, we also have a REST API that enables KickApps customers to access our applications at the data level. You can view the API documentation at http://rest.kickdeveloper.com (note: our REST interface is only available to enterprise customers. Contact us at this URL for more info: http://www.kickapps.com/contact-us/index.php )

We hope you enjoy these enhancements and look forward to hearing your feedback on the KickDeveloper Message Board!

Your Friends at KickApps.