Updates to the Groups.io service.
September 14, 2018
- NEW: Add the group subject tag to the subject of private replies.
- NEW: When direct adding people to a parent group and subgroups, only send out one direct add notification to each member.
- CHANGE: Added text to banner that is displayed when invites or direct adds need to be approved to hopefully explain things better.
- INTERNAL: Added support for postgresql integer arrays.
- INTERNAL: Upgraded the postgresql go package.
- BUGFIX: There was a bug in the subgroup display page when categories are set up that could cause groups in the same category to not be displayed together.
- CHANGE: On the pending message page, display the 'Ban Sender' even for existing members.
- BUGFIX: For some reason, Google lost our geocode API key, which prevented the database map view from working. Had to recreate the key.
- CHANGE: When rejecting a pending subscription by email, ignore the request if the subscription is not, in fact, pending (ie it's been approved already).
- NEW: New group setting, Viruses, to set whether messages with viruses are blocked or moderated.
- API: New group field: HandleVirus
- CHANGE: Do not log a change in user or display name in the activity log of any group the user is banned from.
- CHANGE: In activity log, change "Rejected message" to "Message rejected".
- BUGFIX: Pending subscriptions older than two weeks were not being deleted.
September 7, 2018
- NEW: If NormalizeHTMLEmails is set, normalize any added member signatures as well.
- NEW: Added 'TR:' as a subject reply indicator.
- CHANGE: Made our Message-ID header line parsing code smarter, to deal with a crazy message-id of the form "<salkdjjks@alksjdklas> (extra unexpected stuff here)"
- CHANGE: Now removing any erroneous nulls from decoded message subject lines.
- CHANGE: When exporting Yahoo Groups, scan messages for U+FFFD characters and remove them.
- INTERNAL: Work on automated provisioning/configuration of new machines.
- SYSADMIN: Created a new, larger search cluster, and reindexed the site.
- BUGFIX: Added missing 'Reply To Group & Sender' option in full digests.
- BUGFIX: When aliasing a hashtag to another tag, existing topics were not being properly updated in the search index. So searches on the aliased-to tag would not show the aliased-from topics. This was due to two issues in how we were updating the search index.
August 31, 2018
- INTERNAL: Tested database backups.
- INTERNAL: Changed the internals of the database APIs to better deal with the new connection pooling system.
- CHANGE: Tweaked the wording of 'Default Post Policy' and 'Default group policy' to be more clear.
- BUGFIX: Couldn't delete a topic that had previously had a hashtag that had been deleted.
- BUGFIX: Fixed a race condition in the test topics page when deleting topics.
- CHANGE: In the Files section, display the Updated field instead of the Created field for Uploaded date.
- CHANGE: Disable Action button on Members page if no members are selected.
- CHANGE: Tweaked URL text in confirmation email to match the URL itself.
August 24, 2018
- BUGFIX: Fix encoding issues with CSV formatted member list download.
- CHANGE: The pending message notification email now uses the pending message's subscriber email address instead of the Sender line when describing who the message is from.
- CHANGE: On the Members page, only bring up the Action dialog if at least one member is selected.
- NEW: Include in the activity log the message sent to someone when directly adding them, similar to how invites are done.
- INTERNAL: Fixed database connection closing issue.
- INTERNAL: Moved all database connections to use a connection pooler.
- CHANGE: Help file tweaks.
- BUGFIX: Fixed two issues with chat that could cause chat messages to not be delivered to all members of the chat room.
- NEW: The member subgroups page now has a Joined column for the subgroups a member is a part of.
- SYSADMIN: Tuned the database.
- NEW: Added 'Int' and 'NS' badges to the pending messages page for messages from Integrations and Non Subscribers.
- BUGFIX: Fixed issue with approving pending messages from non-subscribers.
- BUGFIX: Fixed an issue with long running chat sessions.
- INTERNAL: Now caching some web pages.
August 17, 2018
- SYSADMIN: Upgraded the main database instance.
- BUGFIX: For groups without subgroups, you can now go to https://groupname.groups.io, and it will redirect correctly.
- BUGFIX: Fixed escaping of special characters in search query strings.
- BUGFIX: Fixed two bugs in the DKIM verifying library we use.
- BUGFIX: The 'Bulk Remove' button was being shown to some moderators who didn't have the right permission to use it (they were not able to actually use the feature).
- NEW: Added a section to the Help about the FBL and people being removed because of spam.
- NEW: When viewing a subgroup where you aren't subscribed, but you are a mod/owner of the parent group, the tag on the sidebar will now say 'Parent Mod' or 'Parent Owner'.
- CHANGE: Tweaked the sidebar width in certain instances, making it a little larger.
- BUGFIX: Disabled the 'Subscribe to Calendar' button for subgroups where you are not a subscriber (but are owner of the parent group).
- CHANGE: Parallelized updating the DNS servers to speed subgroup creation up.
- BUGFIX: Fixed a problem with repeating event reminders that could cause some of them to not be sent.
- BUGFIX: Fixed some labels on the group settings page for screen readers.
- CHANGE: Added wording on Display Name edit pages: "Note: When you post, your email address is also shown to group members who receive messages via email."
- NEW: On the pending message screen, if you use the Approve & Unmoderate Button to approve messages from non subscribers, a dialog will now pop up telling you that these people cannot be unmoderated (because they're not members).
- CHANGE: Upgraded Go toolchain from 9.4 to 10.3. This unexpectedly broke several parts of the web site that dealt with uploading files. Fixed.
- SYSADMIN: Upgraded main bastion host.
- CHANGE: Don't fig leaf email addresses when viewing source.
- NEW: Adding Authentication-Results header line showing DKIM/SPF tests. Only visible when viewing message source in the archives.
- SYSADMIN: Renewed *.groups.io ssl certificate.
- CHANGE: When posting a message, ignore returns clicked when editing the subject.
- BUGFIX: When viewing or editing an individual database row that has a date column, the date displayed would always be today.
- BUGFIX: When viewing or editing an individual database row that has an empty date column, the date displayed would always be today.
August 10, 2018
- NEW: Replaced the 'Only Moderators Can Create Hashtags' checkbox with a dropdown, allowing messages with new hashtags to be either bounced, or the new hashtags to be removed.
- API: Changed group field: restrict_create_hash_tags is now hash_tag_permissions.
- SYSADMIN: Fixed log rotation issues on the DNS servers.
- NEW: When exporting group data, you can now export hashtag data.
- SYSADMIN: Now serving the cookie consent js/css code locally instead of from a CDN, because that was timing out.
- OTHER: Sent out the GDPR Privacy Policy update email. Dealt with a bunch of angry responses.
- INTERNAL: Deleted all user accounts not subscribed to any groups (or only subscribed to updates@) that were at least one month old.
- BUGFIX: Fix internal crash when a non-moderator of a subgroup rejects via email a pending message.
- BUGFIX: The FBL processing code was ignoring reports from some domains.
- CHANGE: Better behavior when uploading multiple files and one of them is a duplicate of an existing file. Previously we would disgard all files in the upload. Now we keep all of them up to the point of the duplicate.
- BUGFIX: If a file was renamed with either / or \ in the name, the file would be unlinked and unreachable. Fixed the bug and re-linked the affected files.
- INTERNAL: Made exportuser and exportgroup more reliable when dealing with large amounts of data.
August 4, 2018
- CHANGE: Only rate limit messages to members from other members, not mods/owners.
- NEW: Display Owner/Mod badges on group sidebar.
- NEW: Added domain/subdomain setup information to the help page.
- SYSADMIN: Migrated one of the DNS servers to a new machine.
- CHANGE: Updated and added sections about our data processing agreement and other aspects of GDPR.
- API: New group field: subgroup_category_id.
- NEW: Subgroup categories.
- NEW: Removed scrolling and reformatted subgroup list page.
July 13, 2018
- NEW: Bulk topic actions.
- INTERNAL: Verifying DKIM sigs of inbound emails, currently in testing only.
- BUGFIX: In some instances, when upgrading a group to premium with the annual plan, the monthly plan was selected instead.
- SYSADMIN: Fix time sync in the Groups.io machine cluster. Very embarassing.
- BUGFIX: Use the user's timezone when generating the 'On such and such' line for message replies.
- NEW: Scanning emails, files and photos for viruses/phishing. Currently in testing.
- CHANGE: For Reply To Sender groups, we don't delete any existing Reply-to headers.
- NEW: Ability for members to repost messages, with configurable parameters, for premium groups.
- CHANGE: Some domains will sometimes reply to emails with '550 This IP has sent too many messages this hour. IB504'. We now treat those as temporary errors instead of permanent errors, and retry again in an hour.
- NEW: Google map view for database tables with address columns, for premium groups.
- NEW: JSON export format for database tables, and the ability to create new tables from these exports.
June 29, 2018
- NEW: Polls have a new option to never show results to members.
- INTERNAL: Moved S3 group deletion operations into the s3server for async and more reliable operation.
- NEW: In the Edit File dialog, you can now replace the existing file with a new file.
- NEW: Premium/Enterprise groups can now create aliases for subgroups (previously they could only create aliases for main/parent groups).
- NEW: More anti-spammer work.
- NEW: Premium/Enterprise groups now have a new Banned Domains tab. Emails from non-subscribers are rejected from banned domains, as well as registrations.
- BUGFIX: Changed references to 'sub' to 'member' in the activity log to make things consistent. Changed several of the message actions to be more clear.
- BUGFIX: For subgroups that are unlisted but with open archives, the feed link wasn't included on the group home page. Also, the archive description was incorrect.
- CHANGE: When clicking the Subgroups tab while in a subgroup, don't redirect to the parent group first.
- NEW: Added DD.MM.YYYY date format preference.
- NEW: Locked Group member notice.
- CHANGE: Changed how we did code highlighting, now using the Google code prettify JS instead of directly using the CSS classes.
- INTERNAL: Upgraded TinyMCE editor to latest version.
- NEW: Group default subscription preferences for date and time display.
June 22, 2018
- NEW: User preferences for date and time display formatting.
- NEW: Lock icons are now displayed for locked groups in the Your Groups list, the My Groups page and the Subgroups page.
- NEW: Support '答复:' as an indicator in the subject of a message reply.
- NEW: 'Ban Sender' button when viewing a pending message sent from a non-member.
- INTERNAL: Changed many operations that relied on Amazon S3 to make them more reliable in the face of intermittent issues with S3 lately.
- INTERNAL: Wrote a new utility to maintain the nginx domain config files.
- NEW: Work on preventing spam signups.
June 15, 2018
- NEW: Seperate Footers group setting, places the footer in a seperate mime chunk, needed to support PGP signatures.
- BUGFIX: Special/HTML characters in event names/descriptions were not handled correctly in the generated ICS files.
- NEW: 'Allow group members to download the message archives' setting.
- CHANGE: When following a thread, insert standard message footers when we send out the initial messages.
- BUGFIX: Footers for messages sent because we're following a thread now have the unfollow link.
- BUGFIX: Wiki TOC links were broken if they contained special characters like parentheses.
- CHANGE: Slight tweaks to html footers and full digests.
June 8, 2018
- BUGFIX: In the mobile view, the Subgroups link was not always displayed when it should be.
- BUGFIX: Fixed several screen reader accessibility issues throughout the site.
- CHANGE: Updated the Google Group transfer page with changed directions.
- BUGFIX: Fixed the Edit button on the Hashtags page on Safari.
- BUGIFX: The 'Upload File' button was never disabled, even when it should have been, due to a typo in the HTML.
- CHANGE: Removed lavabit.com from the list of banned email domains, because they no longer have a disposable email address feature.
- CHANGE: For messages with both a plain text and html part, we now insert the message footer into both parts (previously we'd only insert it into the html part).
- CHANGE: Ignore bad certificates from Yahoo when downloading y! group photos.
- CHANGE: Tweaked plan text message footers to make them much smaller.
- CHANGE: When inviting someone who is not already a Groups.io user, prioritize setting their Full Name to what was in the invite over what their email is set to.
- CHANGE: Changed the time format in the calendar views to use am and pm instead of a and p.
- NEW: You can now change the owner of a photo album.
- NEW: You can now change the owner of an individual photo.
- BUGFIX: Removed unused Search button on the chat page.
- CHANGE: When viewing poll results, keep the order of respondents the same in View By Answer mode. Also removed pagination widget, because we don't currently paginate that page.
- BUGFIX: For messages with text larger than 32kb in length, we incorrectly passed a much shorter part of the message to the search indexer than was necessary.
- CHANGE: Changed the gavel icon to a scale to represent moderated threads.
- BUGFIX: Some error messages weren't being displayed correctly when editing a group's settings (such as group description being too short).
- NEW: Exportgroup now exports more member data, in json format. For premium/enterprise groups, we now export past member data. And we export member notices.
- NEW: You can now move photos between photo albums.
- CHANGE: In the pending message page, all buttons are disabled until at least one message is selected.
- INTERNAL: Completed switchover to new search cluster.
- CHANGE: In message, wiki and api revision list pages, if there are two revisions checked, and we check another revision, we remove the oldest revision check.
June 1, 2018
- INTERNAL: Lots of optimization work on speeding up the creation of a new message search index.
- SYSADMIN: Built a new search cluster with additional needed capacity.
- BUGFIX: When exporting an event with RSVPs that allow additional guests, show the additional guest numbers.
- BUGFIX: Fixed a database connection error with the Elasticsearch importer that was waking me up at 3am the last couple of nights. Zzzzzz.
- CHANGE: Subscription Options and Muting & Following updates in the help (thanks Shal and J!).
- NEW: Treat 'Cvp:' as the same as Re: in message subjects (it's Turkish).
- CHANGE: Condensed HTML message footers.
- CHANGE: For groups not set to reply to group, display the receiver's email address in the footer.
- CHANGE: Do not permit group names that begin or end in dash.
- BUGFIX: The display of groups in the 'Your Groups' dropdown could sometimes be wrong on the home page, based on how you were sorting that page.
- BUGFIX: Use the subgroup direct add message for direct adds. Previously we were erroneously using the parent group direct add message and ignoring any subgroup direct add messages.
- CHANGE: For transfers of groups with more than 100,000 messages, we ask for a year's premium subscription. Otherwise, we'll transfer the 100,000 most recent messages.
- BUGFIX: In the transfer interface, improved handling of how we scrape Yahoo Groups in different languages.
May 25, 2018
- NEW: The website now requires consent for cookies.
- NEW: Added cookie policy.
- NEW: Revamped terms of service/privacy policy/about/cookie policy sidebar navigation.
- BUGFIX: Fixed infinite loop when finding a File path in a specific case.
- INTERNAL: Made it easier to profile the web servers in production.
- NEW: Account export lets you specify which groups to export data from, and the export is better broken out by group.
- SYSADMIN: Added an additional webserver.
- CHANGE: We now parse a bunch more incorrect Date: header line formats, where the day of the week is spelled out (Monday) and/or the month is spelled out (January).
May 19, 2018
- SYSADMIN: Upgraded the mail email sending machine.
- BUGFIX: When parsing an emoji (":emojiname:") that doesn't exist, the trailing colon would disappear.
- NEW: Timestamps are included in activity log exports.
- NEW: You can export all of your account data.
- BUGFIX: HTML special characters in calendar descriptions were not properly escaped in generated ICS files.
- NEW: You can export the activity log now as part of the export group process, and exports are now logged.
- INTERNAL: Increased nsqd message size limits for large export group archives.
May 11, 2018
- CHANGE: Increased the seriousness of the maintenance page.
- NEW: You can now export all parts of your group, including chats, files, photos, wikis and calendar events.
- CHANGE: Tweaked the delete group page to make it more explicit which group you're about to delete.
- INTERNAL: Made yahoo group crawler more resilient to Yahoo errors.
- CHANGE: The member not confirmed 'NC' badge is now orchid color instead of light blue.
- BUGFIX: Keep formatting for github commit messages.
- INTERNAL: Optimizations for group transfers.
- BUGFIX: Viewing video attachments didn't work.
- BUGFIX: Fix updating the time for repeating events.
- CHANGE: Fix for change in Yahoo's login process.
April 20, 2018
- CHANGE: When sending a message to a member and BCC All is checked, we previously would not send the message to a moderator that didn't have the pending message notification enabled. We now always send the message to all moderators.
- CHANGE: Wording tweaks on event notification emails re: RSVPs.
- SYSADMIN: Upgraded Elasticsearch software.
- SYSADMIN: Reconfigured some machines to avoid future downtime.
- BUGFIX: #cal-invite messages to all day events had the end date be one day earlier in the attached ICS file.
- CHANGE: The message sent to members after a group is moved from Yahoo is now from the +owner address, instead of the group address, to prevent inadvertent group replies.
April 14, 2018
- CHANGE: Change the URL sort for database tables to sort by title first, then URL, then description.
- INTERNAL: Upgraded to Font Awesome 5.
- NEW: For premium groups, you can now lock groups/subgroups, making them read-only.
- INTERNAL: Updated the Stripe API library.
- CHANGE: Instead of changing the Message-ID for all recipients, we now only change the Message-ID for the original sender.
- CHANGE: Formatting changes to the view event page for events with RSVPs.
- BUGFIX: We didn't recognize RSS feeds that were served to us in non UTF-8 format. We now fetch feeds and specifically convert them to UTF-8 before passing them off to the feed parser.
April 6, 2018
- NEW: When attempting to change your email address to an address that already has an account, and that isn't just subscribed to updates@, we now offer the ability to merge the two accounts automatically. An email is sent to the to account and that account has to accept it.
- NEW: From the directory, you can send an email to another member. Limited to 2 per day to a specific person, 10 per day total per group.
- NEW: We now keep and display the response from the email server on successful deliveries, in the Email Delivery History pages.
- CHANGE: The group home page month view now takes into account a user's timezone.
- BUGFIX: When editing a poll, the message that gets sent out now starts "A poll has been updated"....
- BUGFIX: Plain text messages had emails obscured even when the group was set to show them.
- CHANGE: Allow padding-left style, to fix indented HTML.
- BUGFIX: Fix page back in group directory.
- BUGFIX: Honor group aliases when processing emails.
March 30, 2018
- CHANGE: For groups with reply-to set to sender, include List-Post header in single messages.
- NEW: Delete account functionality, without having to contact support.
- BUGFIX: In a plain text message, if someone enclosed a link in < and >, we included the trailing > in the link.
- BUGFIX: Don't send event reminders and notices for cancelled events.
- FIX: Fixed wording in the message visibility sections of the create group and create sub group pages.
- CHANGE: If a wiki has a sidebar or footer, disable the 'Add a Sidebar' or 'Add a Footer' button instead of making them disappear.