Dear friends,,

The main stage of development of version 18.0 has been completed, the release is under testing and pre-release preparation, but in the meantime, we suggest you familiarize yourself with information about what awaits you with the release of the new version.

The following changes have been implemented:

1. A completely new personal messaging system has been added to the site. The entire personal messaging system on the site has been completely rewritten. It is now not just about sending a single personal message and only being able to respond to a separate message with a full quote, but it is a full-fledged conversation where users see all messages in one combined thread, and the conversation takes place in a chat format. Upon receiving a message, users can repeatedly reply and send messages to each other within one topic. Users can leave the conversation at any time if they consider it finished or want to maintain order in their personal messages, but if another participant sends a new message in the same thread, the entire conversation will be automatically restored for the participant who left, and they can again see the entire conversation and understand its context. Additionally, users now have the ability to edit messages in the conversation if the other participant has not yet read it. Messages can also be deleted from the conversation if necessary. Messages can be quoted in full or partially, and much more.

2. Added support and use of artificial intelligence in creating and editing publications. Artificial intelligence will help you quickly create the necessary text or rewrite or change the writing style, or make translations and much more according to your wishes. The use of artificial intelligence based on the ChatGPT API is supported. In the settings, you can specify an entry point for communicating with ChatGPT, thereby allowing you to use not only OpenAI's direct ChatGPT but also any service that supports this API. In addition to this, you can flexibly configure in the settings how ChatGPT should be used, which language model to employ, which user groups are allowed to use artificial intelligence, the style of response, maximum limits, and restrictions on response length.

3. Added the ability to assign the same names to categories for URLs if they are in different parent categories. For example, you can create a category structure like "games/rpg/news/", "games/shooters/news/", and so on. Additionally, the algorithms for generating various links on the site involving categories have been optimized, significantly improving performance and reducing server resource consumption with a large number of categories.

4. In the DataLife Engine control panel, in the "Performance Analysis" section, the ability has been added to immediately disable a specific script feature to reduce load and increase performance. Now you don't need to go into the script settings and look for the relevant settings to disable a particular feature. You can disable it directly by clicking the corresponding button next to the desired setting. The disabling occurs instantly using AJAX technology.

5. For user output of publications using the tag {custom ….} support has been added for a new parameter unique="yes", which indicates that publications in this block should not be repeated if they have already been displayed on the site, i.e., unique publications should be displayed in this block. This will help avoid repetition of the same news in user output blocks if they fall under the same output criteria. For example, two tags {custom category="1" unique="yes" limit="1"} and {custom category="1" unique="yes" limit="1"} will display different publications, despite having the same parameters; the first tag will display the first news item from the category, and the second will display the second, skipping the first. Also, if a publication was displayed in the {content} block, it will not be displayed if this option is present in the tag {custom ….}.

6. More extensive support for various icons has been added for uploaded files in the upload manager, making it easier to identify different documents, and file extension display has been added.

7. Added the ability to download files uploaded to publications directly in the upload manager when adding and editing publications.

8. Support for OGG, FLAC, AAC formats has been added for uploading and playing music and music playlists using the DLE player.

9. For site access restrictions by country, support for IPv6 addresses has been added. Additionally, the database provider used to determine the visitor's country has been changed to use databases from IP2location, resulting in a much more accurate and extensive database.

10. A feature has been added to the script settings in the admin panel to enable the determination of a visitor's country based on data from the Cloudflare service, in case your site is connected and proxied through this service. In this instance, the server load is reduced, as DataLife Engine will not have to search for it in the local database on its own. If there is no data about the country, an automatic search will be carried out in the local database.

11. The script settings in the admin panel have been updated to allow or deny access to the site for bots if the site is restricted to certain countries, in case the bot is located in a restricted country. For example, if access to the site is restricted for certain countries, you can still allow search engines to index the site if they are located in the restricted country.

12. In the script settings in the admin panel, the ability to enable blocking circumvention using VPNs has been added for countries. If a user is located in a prohibited country and accesses the site, they will be blocked, and if they attempt to access the site again using a VPN from an allowed country, they will also be detected and blocked on the site.

13. For descriptions of settings allowing and denying access to the site by countries, the country in which the user is currently located has been added, as determined by DLE. This is so the site administrator can visually see that everything is working correctly, and their country is identified as needed, ensuring they do not accidentally block themselves.

14. When adding and editing publications in the control panel, the ability has been added in the "Access" tab to specify a list of countries where the display of this publication is allowed. Additionally, the ability to specify a list of prohibited countries for viewing the publication has been added. This way, you can easily configure in which countries the full news can be viewed, and in which it cannot.

15. For advertising materials added to the DataLife Engine control panel, a feature has been added to specify a list of countries where the display of these advertising banners and materials is allowed. Additionally, it is now possible to specify a list of countries where viewing is prohibited. This way, you can easily configure in which countries to display this code and in which not to. Thus, targeting the display by country.

16. Automatic saving of set parameters when uploading images and files to the server in the DataLife Engine download manager has been added. These parameters will be restored when the manager window is opened again. For example, if you chose not to apply watermarks, changed the size of the reduced copy, changed the storage, and for some reason left the page or navigated to another publication, all of this will be saved in the browser's local storage. When you reopen the download manager, all your set parameters will be restored, rather than set to default. This way, you don't need to set the parameters again each time.

17. The script settings in the control panel have been updated to allow specifying user groups, whose users will be displayed by default in the feedback form on the site if the email is not sent to a specific user. Previously, only users from the Administrators and Chief Editors groups were displayed there. Now you can assign your default user groups.

18. For RSS feed imports to the site, an option has been added to the stream settings to specify whether or not to include a link to the source from which the news was obtained. You can enable the addition of the source in the short or full description, or in both fields. Alternatively, you can disable the addition of the source when importing publications to the site.

19. The BBCODES and Floara editors were removed. These editors have become globally and morally obsolete, and their support was completely stopped a long time ago. No new features were added to them. Yes, we know that removing these editors is not the most popular measure, and users have asked us not to delete these editors. However, maintaining unsupported editors cannot continue indefinitely, as these editors significantly hindered the development of the script as a whole. The generation of different codes requires additional checks and text filtering, and the execution of a large amount of redundant code when processing publications. Therefore, a decision was made to completely abandon these editors, which significantly simplified the code and accelerated its processing when adding publications, as well as reduced the time spent on code testing. Additionally, it allowed us to focus efforts and resources on adding new features and capabilities. Now, a single TinyMCE editor is used for publications, and the processing of publications when they are added and edited has significantly accelerated, and server resource consumption has been reduced. For comments, there is also the option to completely disable the editor for sites that do not want any content formatting in comments and prefer only short, clean text.

20. When adding and editing publications in the admin panel and on the site, the visual editor was changed in such a way that by default it contains a single panel with the most frequently used buttons for content creation. If a full set of buttons is needed, the user can expand the panel while using the editor. Additionally, for each field, the selected collapsed or expanded state of the editor is automatically saved and will remain the same after reloading the page. This way, by default, the editor takes up less space, leaving more room for the editable content, and you can choose and save the editor's state for each field individually.

21. Changes have been made to the enabling and disabling mode of the adapted editor mode for mobile phones in comments on the site. It is no longer necessary to separately enable or disable it in the script settings in the control panel. Now it will automatically turn on when used by visitors on mobile devices.

22. For setting up the control panel design selection of DataLife Engine, the ability has been added to choose the editor's design. Each admin panel user can choose either the classic view of the editor or the lightweight version. The lightweight version offers a minimally cluttered editor interface, allowing the user to focus directly on the content they are writing. Moreover, the user can enable automatic editor height, which will automatically adjust to occupy as much screen space as the content within the field requires. Thus, small content will take up little space on the screen, while larger content allows for a larger editable area to be displayed.

23. Added support for a mobile-adapted editor when writing personal messages on the site.

24. Added support for dark themes for the editor when writing personal messages using AJAX on the site.

25. Improved text cleaning when inserting into the editor for removing "junk code" from the inserted text code.

26. In quick editing of publications, support has been added for pasting text from the browser's clipboard with HTML tags preserved.

27. When banning a user in the user management section in the admin panel, a log of the administrator's account who imposed the ban is added. This allows other administrators to immediately and easily see in the user management panel who exactly issued the block to the user. This speeds up the resolution of any contentious issues when there are a large number of moderators and administrators on the site.

28. For the template displaying information about an account or access being blocked (banned.tpl), support has been added for new tags: [banned-from] text [/banned-from] which display the text enclosed within them if the block was issued by a person, rather than automatically, for example, by country. Additionally, a new tag has been added: {banned-from} which displays the login of the administrator who issued the block to the user. This way, blocked users can immediately see who and why they were blocked on the site.

29. For the global template tag {catmenu …} designed for displaying a list of categories, support has been added for a new parameter idexclude="1,2,3-5" where you can specify the IDs of categories or a range of categories that should not be included in the category list, and all categories except the specified ones will be displayed.

30. Added the ability to restrict users in the user group settings regarding the number of negative ratings and dislikes they can give to news articles. You can specify the maximum number of negative ratings a user can give to news articles per day. For example, by setting it to two, a user will only be able to give two negative ratings within a day. The number of positive ratings is not limited. This way, you can protect the site from any negative visitor who massively gives negative ratings to everything.

31. Added the ability to restrict users in the user group settings regarding the number of negative ratings and dislikes they can give to comments. You can specify the maximum number of negative ratings a user can give to comments per day. For example, by setting it to two, a user will only be able to give two negative ratings to comments within a day. The number of positive ratings is not limited. This way, you can protect the site from any negative visitor who massively gives negative ratings to everything.

32. Added support for new tags [replycount] text [/replycount] in the comments template (commets.tpl) which display the enclosed text if the comment has replies from other users, and also added opposite tags [not-replycount] text [/not-replycount] which display the enclosed text if there are no replies to the comment. This way, you can create a more flexible design for information about comment replies.

33. Improved and optimized the display of the editor for publications on mobile devices in the DataLife Engine control panel.

34. Improved and optimized the display of the editor during quick editing of posts on the site. The editor now has a dynamic height depending on the amount of content in the fields. If there is only a little information written in the field, the editor will take up space proportional to the content. This facilitates editing information when there are many fields.

35. When displaying a user's group in comments on the site, if they have been banned, information is now shown indicating that the user is banned, similar to the display of their group in their profile.

36. When displaying information on the site about whether a user is online or not, a check is added to see if they have also been banned on the site previously. If they are banned, their status will always be offline, even if they attempt to log in successfully.

37. The preview of messages in bulk mailing in the control panel has been revised and improved. The design, fonts were improved, and full support for styling settings in the panel, which the user customizes personally, was added. Full support for the visual design of the control panel and for the message sending window was also added.

38. The ability to use double quotes for keywords that need to be found and replaced in the cross-link management section on the site has been added.

39. The ability to insert live broadcasts from the YouTube service on your site using [mediа=…..] tags has been added.

40. Comment flood protection has been moved from the script's general settings to user group settings. Thus, you can enable and disable this protection for each user group separately, as well as assign your own timeout for repeated comment addition to the site for each group.

41. The system for searching publications by search template during RSS import of publications in the DataLife Engine control panel has been significantly improved and optimized. Now you can specify any complex and multi-line code from the website page as the initial and final code, simply by copying it from the source site's code, without the need to use complex configurations with the {skip} tag.

42. Navigation output for publication and comment pages has been optimized and improved for mobile devices. When a visitor uses a smartphone to view the site, the number of page elements in the navigation is significantly reduced, allowing the navigation to easily fit within a single line without moving navigation links to other lines. This gives the page a more correct visual appearance, while maintaining full navigation convenience.

43. If access to the site has been denied, for example, if a user is banned, or restricted by country, the sending of correct HTTP 503 headers indicating that the page is temporarily unavailable has been added.

44. A check has been added for country-restricted access to the site for all AJAX actions performed on the site, not just for direct site views. This allows automatic bots from prohibited countries to be blocked if they have already been given the necessary parameters and tokens to perform some automatic actions.

45. A check for the plugin name being filled in when adding plugins in the admin panel has been added, before sending data to the server, to avoid errors about mandatory fields not being filled and to prevent data loss after submission.

46. Added correct support for embedding Twitter posts using [mediа=…] tags due to the service changing its domain to x.com

47. Added support for the new PHP 8.4.xx series

48. Improved and accelerated processing of large texts when adding and editing posts, as well as reduced memory usage in some cases.

49. Improved and optimized the algorithms for building category trees when adding posts in the control panel and on the website. This has allowed for a significant increase in page rendering speed in cases with a large number of categories.

50. Optimized and improved the processing of a number of template tags, which in some cases allows for faster rendering of templates and reduces memory usage.

51. Removed support for OpenSearch, due to the fact that the technology is outdated and no longer supported by current browsers.

52. Fixed an issue where it was possible to send an email message from the site through feedback to a user banned on the site.

53. Fixed an issue, where some AJAX functions on the site might not work if script settings disabled site authorization support, while the administrator remained logged into the DataLife Engine control panel.

54. Fixed an issue, where it was impossible to remove all categories from a publication when using mass actions in the control panel when selecting the action "Change categories" for selected publications.

55. Fixed an issue, where some template tags in comment output templates did not work correctly when AJAX navigation through comment pages was enabled.

56. Fixed previously detected and reported minor errors in the script.