Release notes for Tetra-WebBBS 6.21

Tetra WebBBS Documentation

Tetra-WebBBS 6.21 is a maintenance release with a few new features. Nevertheless it's recommended to upgrade ALL prior versions because of the fix squashing a bug in Quickprefs (see below).

Installation

For detailed instructions on setup of Tetra WebBBS from scratch or on upgrading older implementations please read the setup guide.

New Features

Cookie configuration
Tetra-WebBBS 6.21 allows for some new optional configuration settings for the cookies sent by the forums. For details of configuration please look up $CookieLifetime and $CookiePath. In some countries it is no longer legal to set "permanent" cookies without prior consent of user. However, this of course depends on the law which is in effect in your country. You'll have to find out yourself. Either way, esp. the $CookieLifetime variable will help to configure your forums according to legal requirements.

Autosensing for non-default environment
Ever since WebBBS and Tetra-WebBBS use some environmental variables set by almost all web servers. In password protected folders the username of the person who logged in is accessable via the server environment $ENV{'REMOTE_USER'}. Unfortunately some hosts "modernized" their setup meanwhile and the common $ENV{'REMOTE_USER'} variable isn't available any more but instead the same value is passed to the scripts using a new $ENV{'REDIRECT_REMOTE_USER'}. Tetra-WebBBS 6.21 autosenses for these "improvements" and internally adjusts things accordingly.

Changes And Fixes

Quickprefs
We've found a bug in the quick preferences routine which must have been sitting there since we first introduced the feature. Nobody ever reported it because very likely it rarely shows up. However if it does, the effected browser gets into a catch 22 situation which is hard to overcome for an inexperienced user. This bug has been squashed in Tetra-WebBBS 6.21.
Upgrading ALL prior versions is recommended because of this fix!

CSS
Minor CSS issue solved occuring in Opera and WebKit browsers (Safari, Chrome).

AJAX
Solved an issue with non-utf8 characters in teasers and other features based on AJAX.

Previous/Next navbar links fixed
The feature was sort of 'broken' ever since. In threaded or alphabetical listing styles there is no chronological context for time-based previous/next links. Thus we've now limited those two links on message display pages to viewing styles set to utilize chronological listing styles (aka "Simple List" in preferences). If your users miss those links, they want to read in chronological order anyway. Thus they should simply set their preferences to "Simple List" and they should be fine again.