At it’s heart, Simple:Press 5 is a from the ground up rewrite. For the previous 5 or so years we have developed the plugin, the codebase had remained largely the same. We were definitely getting limited in what we could do and taking performance hits because of it. We re-architected the codebase with an eye on performance and extendability. And our pre-release testers tell us the performance gains are huge.

Gone are the limiting skins of previous versions – replaced by a theme system akin to the WordPress theme system. No longer are you limited to the layout dictated by the skins and fixed layout – only being able to, for the most part, change the colors or fonts. With Simple:Press themes you are in complete control of the look and feel of your forum. Almost all elements can be moved or placed where you want them to be. As part of the release, we have provided 4 core themes to get you started. 3 of those themes come with multiple color overlay options. We have already seen some wonderful looking themes developed by our pre-release community. We soon hope to have the ability for the community to contribute and share themes. We will be looking to update our showcase page too with some of these great new 5.0 themes.

Simple:Press 5 also features a full fledged API. We have extended the WordPress hooks, actions and filters into Simple:Press. Many, many things can be done now with these hooks much like themes and plugins do for WordPress.

The most obvious use of this API is the new plugins for Simple:Press – another key feature of Version 5. The last release of Version 4 was approaching 3MB in size. The codebase had gotten bloated with a ton of features and functionally. A lot of these features were not even used by many of our users. So we developed SP plugins and moved a lot of non-core functionality into plugins. So now, you only need to grab those plugins if you want those features. Just like WordPress, you pick and choose which ones to use on your site. This has dropped the core archive size to about 900k – a huge difference. Plugins will allow us to add new features and functionality without necessarily having to make changes in core that affect everyone. We also soon hope to have the ability for the community to contribute and share plugins.

Another great feature built in to Simple:Press 5 is upgrading from within the WordPress admin itself. Once you get going with Version 5, no more ftp’ing new versions. Simple:Press 5 fully supports the WordPress updates functionality. And yes, you will also be able to update the SP themes and plugins from within the WP updater too!

For translating Simple:Press into your native language, we now use GlotPress, the same community driven translation tool that powers WordPress localizations. So visit our 5.0 translation site and help get it in your own language.

Starting with Version 5, we are also moving away from our old wiki method of information delivery and moving to a codex style set of documentation. Again, this will be similar to how the WordPress codex works. And best of all, the community itself is able to edit and update codex pages with information. We will be launching that shortly. Today, the codex is not fully populated – in fact, most information is missing. We are just starting to populate it with information as we have been more focused on the pre-release process of fixing bugs and getting folks going with the new API. You can check out the available information by visiting our Simple:Press Codex site.

So what are you waiting for? Head over to the downloads page and grab your copy of Simple:Press 5! Please be sure to fully read the download page for Simple:Press 5 requirements.

For 5.0, we are going to do translations a bit different.  We have launched a new collaborative translation site in the hope of coaxing more folks into helping to translate. This new collaborative translation site uses GlotPress, the same localization tool used for WordPress in creating its localized versions.

For SP 5.0, we have broken the translations up into multiple pieces. There is the front end core, the back end administration core, plugins and themes. So the base SP core is broken into two pieces: front end and administration. Each plugin and each theme will have their own translations too.
With GlotPress, users can translate a single string or as many strings as they like.  Additionally, if you disagree with a translation or want to recommend an improved translation, users can do that. 

So head on over to our new Simple:Press 5.0 Translation Site and help translate Simple:Press into your language.

You will need to register on the translation site in order to help translate (yup, that’s a WordPress site hiding in the background).  You can find the register link in the upper right hand corner as well as some getting started information.

As part of the translation process, and to help speed it up, we would like to get a couple 2 or3 Translation Validators for each language. When a translation is submitted, it needs to be approved.  Since the Simple:Press team doesn’t speak all the languages that our users do, these Translation Validators will help the approval process along.  If you would like to volunteer to be a Translation Validator for a language, please let us know via our contact form.

If you don’t see a language listed that you would like to translate Simple:Press into, please let us know and we will see if we can get it added for you.

Again, that new translation site is http://glotpress.simple-press.com

Join the forum discussion on this post

We would especially like to thank all those who took part in the alpha stage – for their tracking down of bugs, their testing and their suggestions for improvement.

If you want to take a closer look at V5 beta then head over to the Download Page.

Some of the bugs squashed were an issue with using wp smileys, images from flickr and photobucket clashing with oembeds, wp/sp comment interspersing, icon text not saving in options, tinymce spellchecker and tinymce paste plain text. You can see all the changes on our bug tracker page for 4.4.5.

It is a also worth noting that we updated all of the Simple:Press Icon Sets for this release as part of the icon text not saving in the options issue. So you may want to grab our latest icon sets too though not required if you are not having any issues.

Please head over to our downloads page and grab 4.4.5. This really does clear the decks for 5.0 development which is starting an Alpha testing period beginning July 1.

The affected files are listed below:

M simple-forum/sf-hooks.php
M simple-forum/styles/editors/tinymce/ui.css
M simple-forum/styles/icons/default/ICON_DEFAULTS.php
M simple-forum/styles/icons/three-en/ICON_DEFAULTS.php
M simple-forum/styles/icons/two-en/ICON_DEFAULTS.php
M simple-forum/styles/icons/ash/ICON_DEFAULTS.php
M simple-forum/styles/icons/four-en/ICON_DEFAULTS.php
M simple-forum/sf-loader-admin.php
M simple-forum/admin/panel-options/forms/sfa-options-style-form.php
M simple-forum/admin/panel-options/support/sfa-options-prepare.php
M simple-forum/admin/panel-options/support/sfa-options-save.php
M simple-forum/forum/forms/sf-form-login.php
M simple-forum/forum/sf-page-components.php
M simple-forum/linking/sf-links-comments.php
M simple-forum/library/sf-filters.php
M simple-forum/install/sf-install.php
M simple-forum/install/sf-upgrade.php
M simple-forum/sf-constants.php
M simple-forum/editors/tinymce/plugins/spellchecker/editor_plugin.js
M simple-forum/editors/tinymce/plugins/spellchecker/css/content.css
M simple-forum/editors/tinymce/plugins/spellchecker/classes/utils/JSON.php
M simple-forum/editors/tinymce/plugins/spellchecker/classes/utils/Logger.php
M simple-forum/editors/tinymce/sf-tinyinit.php
M simple-forum/sf-control.php
M simple-forum/messaging/ahah/sf-ahah-pm-manage.php

If you have already volunteered to participate in the Alpha, we should be contacting you this weekend for some details and preparation. If you haven’t volunteered to help test our new Theme and Plugin API, you can leave us a note in our 5.0 Alpha Forum and let us know you want to participate.

The countdown to Simple:Press 5.0 begins now! Watch for more posts discussing V5 features in the near future!

Themes are the heart and soul of version 5.0 and the entire code base has been completely rewritten to accommodate them and to make customisation that much simpler for our end users. Every element of the forum has it’s own, unique function or tag, with dedicated parameters that can determine the placement and look of that element.

Like WordPress itself, an SP theme consists of a set number of templates – Group View, Forum View, Topic View, Search View, Profile View, Members View etc. Each of these templates has a set of functions or tags appropriate for that view that can be arranged to suit the users preferred layout. And if there is an element you don’t want – well – just remove it! If a new plugin comes along you want to add to your forum – just add the appropriate tags where you want them.

We have also introduced ‘Overlays’. These are simple colour variants that overlay the main theme CSS file that quickly change the colours and other display features making customisation and matching of overall site themes that much easier and quicker to achieve.

And for the purists out there – version 5.0, gone are the use of HTML tables for layout! Also – most icons are optional. Change the parameters to the function call and immediately turn an icon into a standard link or into a styled button.

The illustration above depicts part of the new admin panel where themes are selected and shows our base theme which has been constructed to match fairly closely to previous versions of Simple:Press. Jokingly called ‘twentyeleven’ in honour of WordPress it will be one of the base themes provided when Simple:Press version 5.0 is released.

And finally – we aim to enable two themes to be selected at any one time – one for standard browsers and a second one for use by mobile devices that will allow for the smaller display and can be slimmer in terms of the data and elements used.

Plugins are something we have wanted to do for Simple:Press for sometime now. Over the years, the core code has bloated to nearly 2.5 MB as we added in new features and capabilities. Not all of these features and capabilities are used by all users. Additionally, we get a lot of requests for new features too – again, ones that wont be used by everyone. Plugins allow us to break out some capabilities and functionality into add on modules. If a user wants that capability, they can just add the plugin and press on. If you don’t, then your Simple:Press core will be leaner. As of the writing of this post, and its certainly subject to change as we finish the 5.0 development, the core code size is down to under 800 KB. Thus far, the functionality that we have pulled out into a plugin includes:

• Admin Bar
• Custom Profile Fields
• Policy Documents
• Post Rating
• Private Messaging
• Profanity Filtering
• DB Pruning
• Editors (TinyMCE, HTML, and BBCode)
• Report Post
• Spam Registrations
• Subscriptions
• Syntax Highlighting
• Tags
• Watches

Additionally, we have created a few new plugins for use with 5.0. These include:

• Akismet Spam Prevention (have Akismet monitor your posts for spam)
• Online Activity (see who is visiting what pages in your forum)

We expect the number of plugins to grow considerably after the 5.0 release. A lot of the requests from folks are simple plugins. We hope the community gets behind plugins and contributes some back. We certainly will whip up a few plugins as we have some tickets that have been just waiting for the plugin API.

To facilitate plugins, we developed an API and leaned heavily on the WP plugin API. So the former SP program hooks and how they were implemented are no more. We have now sprinkled a liberal amount of hooks (actions and filters) around our code core to make it easy for plugins to hook into what’s going on and affect it in their plugins. Additionally, the inclusion of themes into 5.0 (that’s a post for another time) and the use of template tags much like a WP theme make it possible for plugins to provide an easy method for users to put the plugin output wherever they want. Of course, we cannot predict every location where a hook or filter will be needed so as time goes by and users start playing with the plugin API, we will add more hooks and filters. Did I say their was a 5.0 alpha coming up to play with the plugin API?

To help admins manage their Simple:Press plugins, we have created a new admin panel that lists all currently loaded plugins. Just like with WP, you can have plugins activated or deactivated. This admin panel will show you which plugins are active and which are not. Also, if a plugin has an update available, it will be shown on the plugins panel too. And yes, you can upgrade any plugins with an update available right there from within the WP admin panel (assumes the plugin is in the SP plugin repository). We will cover the inclusion of the auto update of sp core, plugins and themes in another preview post, but it too is a big deal! Additionally, on our storage locations admin panel, you can choose where to store your SP plugins that you are using.

So plugins have arrived to Simple:Press with a bang in 5.0!

Completely re-written from the bottom up, V5 is faster, lighter and features a fully-fledged theme and plugin API.

We are looking for a few serious users to help put the plugin and theme API through a good workout. Help us find what works and what doesn’t and what needs tweaking. This will be a private alpha period because the code is not ready for production sites yet – there is still much work to do before the formal release.

Primarily, we are looking for some folks to work on creating themes and plugins. That’s not to say we don’t want people to take it for a test run and help work out the kinks, but we still have lots to do with V5 and bug hunting is not a primary purpose of the alpha at this time. Any issues noted will of course be documented in our bug tracker to get fixed before release. But, with V5, there are endless possibilities for layouts and features using the new API’s so we would really like users to get imaginative and see what they can come up with. Does our new API support those ideas? If not, how can we make tweaks so it does? What haven’t we thought of?

To participate in this alpha, you will need:

• to have a good understanding and knowledge of php and css.
• to be able to read the code – we have not yet updated any of our documentation or wiki at this early stage.
• to be able to grab the code from our svn repository – there will be no zip files at this stage.
• to have access to a test server. This is not production site ready code.
• to have a current V4.4.4 test system you can upgrade (or be prepared to start with an empty system).

We will, of course, help out as much as possible to introduce and get participants familiar with the API’s and general architecture.

We are shooting to start the alpha in the next two or three weeks. If this exciting time interests you, please let us know in the blog linked topic in the forum. If you want more info on participating in the alpha, let us know. We will contact you and discuss your ability to participate.

The countdown to Simple:Press 5.0 begins now! Watch for more posts discussing V5 features in the near future!

We believe that Simple:Press is already the best WP forum plugin out there and we would like you to help us take it to a whole new level.

For those intrepid users who prefer the quick route to updating – only 3 files have been changed since 4.4.3. These are:

simple-forum/sf-control.php
simple/forum/library/sf-filters.php
simple-forum/resources/jscript/ajaxupload/sf-uploader.php

Once again apologies for this. We will investigate further.