Key usability changes in this version of ocPortal include new “install profiles” built into the Setup Wizard allow you to easily set up a new site with many of the elements pre-configured for your needs. Choose from: blog, community site, info site, portfolio and shopping site. We’ve gone to significant efforts to tune each profile (particularly the blog profile) to ensure clean operation and suitability for purpose.

We have made it easier than ever to strip back your installation of ocPortal, keeping your installation small and efficient. We have achieved this by reducing the number of ocPortal modules that are designated as “core” features. These modules are still bundled by default, but this simplifies ocPortal for small sites and blogs. These revisions to the core system now make it it easy to:

• Disable RSS.
• Cut back the Members system.
• Cut back some of the forum features.
• Remove more features, admin features or the whole collaboration zone.
• We’ve added a new Comcode tag button to forms, which adds an easy form for adding Comcode tags to pages.
• Rearranged the menus to make things simpler.
• Content translation has been made more user friendly (we’ve added a new tutorial too). You can now export PO files from a local install to be able to share them through Launchpad.
• Fixed width support is now built in to theming.

Helping users:

We have added two new features to help webmasters from within their own admin zone. The first is a new chat room for web masters, which enables them to talk with other ocPortal webmasters from their own admin zone. Secondly, we have made it very easy to file a usability report from within ocPortal. This feature is aimed at less experienced users, so they can let us know when something isn’t as clear as it could be.

Performance testing

We have tested millions of entries to ensure huge ocPortal sites run smoother. We have improved speed performance meaning our speed is now similar to our competitors regardless of us being a much more flexible system. As part of the above, more things can be paginated in the system, such as comment topics or buddy lists.

Our new ‘Advanced admin cache’ feature will blow your mind. Once enabled, Google Chrome webmasters will have page’s cache locally on their own machines, whilst the server generates the latest version of the page in the background and delivers it slightly later (e.g. 1 second later, whatever it would be if the AAC cache was not enabled). This means you can click around ocPortal at lightning speed as the server has to do zero work, yet nothing is actually cached in the annoying sense. Saving a few seconds does not seem like much, but it really makes things much more fun.

Other Notable Changes include:

• We have a new WYSIWYG editor, we have Switched WYSIWYG editor to CKEditor: better editor, with added support for IE9, Safari, Google Chrome and Opera.
• Gallery Improvements including galleries now support SWF files and now accepts direct Facebook and Youtube video links.
• Our default theme now has Mobile support including better mobile theme detection and framework to meet modern hardware.
• Added A new main_multi_content block has been added that allows you to embed sets of any kind of content, sorted in a number of ways.
• Added webm and HTML5 video support.
• New functionality for creating temporary usergroup memberships.
• Improved Breadcrumb usability and flexibility.
• New support for writing addons for associating to videos on external video sites, rather than it being limited to Facebook and Youtube via hard-coding.
• Fixed issues with dark theme wizard themes.

There are many more changes which are too numerous to list in full here. You can find out more information and a full list of changes at http://ocportal.com/site/news/view/new_releases/ocportal-6-released.htm

There are a number of key changes and additions within this version of the software; The Admin zone has been given an overhaul including new drop down menus and a much more useful front page. Design change highlights include :

• A complete redesign of the Gallery system (we know this is going to make a lot of people very happy)
• The member profile screen has been completely redesigned
• A restructuring of the member points screen, making the points system far more intuitive.
• The quiz screen has been redesigned
• Just about every side block has been revised
• A brand new commenting interface

We have given an overhaul to commenting, RSS and ratings features. These include allowing guests to choose a display name and improving the previewing of reviews. ocPortal version 5 has been thoroughly tested with IE6 and should display properly on this browser. We do however expect to drop support for IE6 once IE9 is released.

We have put a great deal of work into the ocPortal themeing system, with the aim of making it much easier for users to make their site look just how they want it to. Users can now preview all of the templates they are working on without needing switch between several screens. Other themeing features include making it easier to edit the site logo across all zones & themes, alongside new CSS styled buttons. In addition to the aforementioned template screen preview system, you can methodically work through all the screens in the system in order to ensure your theme looks good.

The ocPortal gallery system has seen a raft of changes, including an improved edit screen and the ability to provide automatic video transcoding (this requires that ffmpeg is installed). There have also been changes and updates within the quiz feature, the events calendar, the catalogue system, the newsletter manager and CEDI.

We have added a new feature that we call “Real-time rain”, which allows you to visualise activity in your website, either in real-time or via historic playback, which you would otherwise only ever see in the form of plain-text logs. This feature is enormous fun for webmasters and is incredibly pretty.

We have made many more changes in addition to those listed above, which are too numerous to include here. If you would like more information (and we hope you do) please come and have a look at everything we have been working on over the last few months; you can find the Full release information at http://ocportal.com/site/news/view/new_releases/ocportal_5_released.htm

There are a number of key changes and additions within this version of the software; The Admin zone has been given an overhaul including new drop down menus and a much more useful front page. Design change highlights include :

• A complete redesign of the Gallery system (we know this is going to make a lot of people very happy)
• The member profile screen has been completely redesigned
• A restructuring of the member points screen, making the points system far more intuitive.
• The quiz screen has been redesigned
• Just about every side block has been revised
• A brand new commenting interface

We have given an overhaul to commenting, RSS and ratings features. These include allowing guests to choose a display name and improving the previewing of reviews. ocPortal version 5 has been thoroughly tested with IE6 and should display properly on this browser. We do however expect to drop support for IE6 once IE9 is released.

We have put a great deal of work into the ocPortal themeing system, with the aim of making it much easier for users to make their site look just how they want it to. Users can now preview all of the templates they are working on without needing switch between several screens. Other themeing features include making it easier to edit the site logo across all zones & themes, alongside new CSS styled buttons. In addition to the aforementioned template screen preview system, you can methodically work through all the screens in the system in order to ensure your theme looks good.

The ocPortal gallery system has seen a raft of changes, including an improved edit screen and the ability to provide automatic video transcoding (this requires that ffmpeg is installed). There have also been changes and updates within the quiz feature, the events calendar, the catalogue system, the newsletter manager and CEDI.

We have added a new feature that we call “Real-time rain”, which allows you to visualise activity in your website, either in real-time or via historic playback, which you would otherwise only ever see in the form of plain-text logs. This feature is enormous fun for webmasters and is incredibly pretty.

We have made many more changes in addition to those listed above, which are too numerous to include here. If you would like more information (and we hope you do) please come and have a look at everything we have been working on over the last few months; you can find the

Full release information at http://ocportal.com/site/news/view/new_releases/ocportal_50rc1.htm

But wait, we haven’t stopped there! In addition to working on version 5, we have created 30 new optional addons!

We originally announced a mere 3 addons on April 1st, and some of you fell for our fools-day double bluff. In addition to the three addons that we announced previously (ocPurrrr, ocDeadpeople and ocJester), we are launching a suite of addons that include (but are not limited to) :

• Three new blocks to display your Amazon wishlist, Amazon affiliate sales links, and items you are selling through ebay.
• A new spinning tag globe to replace the tag cloud block.
• New mapping tools to display the locations of your members or locations derived from a catalogue (useful for a store locater for example).
• A new chat bot for the ocPortal chat rooms to interact with your site visitors.
• A replacement for the existing chatrooms which uses a Jabber chat room from your server.
• An adminzone search stemmer allowing you to search for publishing for example and it will display results for publish.
• A module to incorporate Google translate into your website.
• A range of new banners to show your support for a wide range of causes within a block.
• A crossword generator and an altered quiz module allowing you to set entrance costs and rewards for entering and completing quizzes.
• An Enhanced shout box

For a full comprehensive list of our addons visit our updated Addons gallery through the following link: http://ocportal.com/site/downloads/misc/add-onsmodifications.htm

In addition to the bug fixes, performance improvements, and usability improvements, the following new features have been implemented:

•Wordpress, Joomla, and HTML website importers
•iCal exporter
•Quiz results CSV exporter
•New Comcode ‘pulse’ tag
•Improved shared-install functionality
•ocPortal can now run without a database (the inbuilt database is now a bundled feature, although not completely supported or recommended for production sites)
•Added new developer feature for the quick addition of language strings, written (temporarily) in-line into the code
•Added support for running a server behind a proxy server (having to connect via proxy to access external resources)

For a full list please visit http://ocportal.com/

Some other features that this new release candidate bring to the table include:

• HTML website importer
• iCal exporter
• Quiz responses CSV exporter
• New “importer redirects”, so that when you go to import it’ll easily redirect you to the correct place in ocPortal for cases when import is done natively through modules (e.g. CSV importing)
• New Comcode ‘pulse’ tag (as seen on our website, where we write ocProducts (it’s configurable with parameters)
• Added submit-URLs to the side_news block and main_forum_news block and side_forum_news block
• Added reply counts to the side_forum_news block
• Added new parameter to main_leader_board block, to filter out staff from the points leaderboard
• Added CAPTCHA support to the main_contact_simple block and main_contact_us block
• The search will now auto search for expanded day selection if it can’t find results for the default days selection (and tell the user it did)
• Allowed the download A-Z index to support ocFilter notation

This is, of course, just a sample of the full changelog which you can find here.

v4.2 is a big step forward for this open-source CMS, because of the many improvements that have been made, including:

• Online store/shopping cart
• Export/import via XML files for site backups and transfers
• True multi-lingual sites (translatable content)
• Flash and Java-based uploaders
• Cutting-edge semantics (“Web 3.0″)
• Search-engine-friendly URLs (keywords in URLs)
• An intelligent summary generator
• Google site map generation
• New social networking features
• Reviews for content
• New support-desk/enterprise features
• And much more…

More information and download links are available on their website.