Wait… what is a Mod anyway?

A Mod (short for modification) is any additional feature to the site that currently isn’t (and probably wont become) part of Family Connections.  The recipe section is not a mod, even though it’s an optional part of FCMS, it is a part of the default installation (if you want it to be).

Some Ideas…

A few mods that my family is currently interested are:

• mobile photo uploader
• facebook photo upload integration (upload photo once and it appears on facebook and fcms)

Website Redesign

By now you’ve probably noticed the new website design, the reason for this was to try and organize things a little nicer and make things easier.  A few important things have changed.  The download section has been changed and is now called “Add-Ons”, which is where I hope to put all the Mods, Themes and Translations for FCMS.  The actual download of FCMS will be in the new Download section.  Here you will be able to download the latest version and past versions and up and coming versions.  Today I put up a release candidate for FCMS 2.3, but please remember this is unstable and still has some bugs.  I don’t really recommend you upgrading just yet, but feel free to download it and check out some of the new stuff.

Testing

I know in the past some of you have said you would be intereasted in helping out with the testing of FCMS 2.3, well now is the time.  I have the latest copy of FCMS 2.3 setup on a development site for anyone who wants to help test, leave me a comment on this post and I’ll create an account for you.

Hopefully this will only last a day or two, with most of the major issues being resolved today/tonight.

Thanks for your patience.

Option 1

At first it was going to just be a way to list relationships like spouse, and kids.  But I decided that that wasn’t good enough, because it wouldn’t link the users together, and wouldn’t add much value.

Option 2

And then I decided to just do a full blown genealogy system.  But that seemed like overkill, and would take more development time then it would add value.  I even looked into integrating existing tools to do this for me, but most of them were too big and too difficult to use/setup and integrate/maintain in FCMS.

Solution

So ultimately I decided on a kind of hybrid approach.  A very lightweight genealogy system, that you could view in both a relationship list form (on your profile) and also view in a nice Family Tree form.  Unlike most genealogy systems FCMS’ won’t include things like adding notes and pictures and some of the more complex features associated with a genealogy tool.  Instead, this will be used more for just showing relationships between friends and family.  Technically it could still be used the same way as other tools, but that’s not it’s main focus right now.

Below is a quick example of how it currently looks (some minor changes may occur before it’s released).  As you can tell from the screenshots, the tree will only show up to two levels of relationships.  For example: your parents, and their parents.  You will be able to view other member’s Tree’s and also add members to your Tree that aren’t currently members of the website.

Click here for a larger screenshot.

What Do you Think

As always, I’d love to hear what everyone thinks of the proposed Family Tree.  Any suggestions, things you like or don’t like? Leave a comment below.

This release fixes a few issues with messed up dates/times and also fixes some language issues, however an issue still exists for PHP4 only, see below for more info.

The following bugs were fixed:

#171 - Invalid password in session/cookie prevents login
#172 – undefined escape_string during Installation
#173 – Add Comment Error File: gallery/index.php [423]
#174 – Calendar dates don’t obey timezones
#178 – Avatar too big on Family News comments
#181 – php-gettext as failback solution

PHP4 only php-gettext bug (undefined index: messages)

Error
Undefined index:  messages
Where: on line 190 in /inc/gettext.inc
Environment: PHP 4.4.9 (Linux)

Currently php-gettext is NOT compatible with PHP4 which causes user’s to see the error message above.  See bug id #554199 on the php-gettext site for more info.

Solutions:

If your host has gettext support:
You should be able to comment out line 190 in the inc/gettext.inc file and that error will go away.  You should also be able to use other languages other than English without problems.

If you host does NOT have gettext support:
Your only real solution until this bug is fixed, is to upgrade to PHP5.  However if you are only using English on your site, you could comment out line 190 in the inc/gettext.inc file and the site will work fine although it will have some noticeable issues, including the small calendar showing up weird among other minor issues.  The main functionality of the site should still work fine.

You may have noticed a lot of security related issues being found and fixed lately.  The reason for this is because of a bad decision on my part:  see most of the security related issues were only exploitable if the exploiter had a valid username/password, so that means that only someone who you’ve allowed to join your site could cause damage or do bad things.  This is the main reason why I have ignored most of these issues in the past.  But that’s a bad way to view things, and more importantly it’s bad programming.

So that’s why I went through and fixed all the issues I could find and then did an audit of the codebase to fix any potential security issues that haven’t been found yet.  So if you don’t let anyone login to your site but family, upgrading to FCMS 2.2.2 isn’t crucial, but it’s still recommended, just to be on the safe side.

FCMS 2.2.2

Download it now, or visit the downloads section.

This release fixes a few security issues.

The following bugs were fixed:

#160 – Login ID SQL Injections
#166 – File Upload Vulnerability
#167 – Directory Traversal Vulnerability
#168 – Audit sql queries for SQL Injections

The downloads for 2.2.1 had a bug in the gallery/index.php which has now been fixed.

Download it now, or visit the downloads section.

This release fixes a few security issues.

The following bugs were fixed:

#157 – FCMS 2.2: bad link on calendar…
#150 – Register SQL Injections
#159 – upimages.php Arbitrary Code Execution
#160 – Theme Settings Vulnerability
#161 – Secunia Advisory SA35039

Currently the best way to help is to check out the new translation page.

Also, I’ve added a couple of new tutorials to the Documentation about translating FCMS:

Translating a New Language
FCMS in Your Language

With Family Connections 2.2 I wanted to try something a little different.  Usually when I’ve finished development on the new release, I simple do some quick testing and then release it, and fix any bugs in some small follow up releases.  To prevent that from happening this time, I’ve decided to wait on the release of FCMS 2.2 until it has been tested a little better.

Instead, I’m going to do what is called a Release Candidate (RC), which basically means this is the final version of 2.2 unless something major has been found.  This means that you can upgrade to 2.2 (RC) now, if you want to, but users won’t be notified on the upgrade screen that they need to upgrade like they normally do.

I’m going to have my family website upgraded to 2.2 (RC) and do some more thorough testing and in a week or two, if everything is fine, then I’ll release this as FCMS 2.2.  If bugs are found, then I’ll simply fix those and add them to 2.2.

Using a Release Candidate will allow users who can’t wait for the next release to go ahead and upgrade now, and other users can wait until all the kinks are worked out.  So if you do upgrade to 2.2 (RC), please be sure to report any bugs or issues you find.

Download FCMS 2.2 (RC) now.

Family Connections 2.3

And for a sneak peek at what is currently scheduled for the next major release, check out the following list.  Remember that this, can and probably will change.

Background

Some of you may already know that my family also uses Family Connections, so a lot of new features are added or changed as a direct result of something that has happened on my family site.  And since I started FCMS the thing that has caused the most trouble with the site is the Photo Gallery.

About the problem

The reason the Photo Gallery causes so much trouble doesn’t really have anything to do with the Photo Gallery, but has to do with how much memory it takes to resize a large resolution photo.  To save on storage/bandwidth and fit the photo neatly within the design of the site, all photos wider than 500px are resized.  And nowadays that’s pretty much every digital camera, in fact, some cell phones probably produce photos larger than that.

Most web hosts these days have set a limit on the amount of memory each user can use to somewhere between 8MB and 16MB.  The problem is, if you try and upload a photo from a 7 megapixel camera you will need around 34MB to resize the photo, so FCMS just outputs an error.

What are our options?

Really there isn’t anything special FCMS can do to fix this problem, the issue is with memory, not the way FCMS resizes photos.  So the only two options would be to 1. increase memory or 2. resize the photos before you upload them.  The problem with #1 is that not everyone can change that setting, the problem with #2 is that it adds an extra step to the process and requires additional software.

If anyone has ever used sites like Facebook to upload photos you might be wondering how they get around this problem.

Advanced Uploader to the Rescue

The solution is to use something called Java, which is a small piece of software that users will download that will allow the photos to be resized on their computer before being uploaded to FCMS.  The great thing is that it’s is integrated nicely into the site and users won’t even really notice any difference.