This is a major update that includes an extensive overhaul of Social Groups, with significant changes to permissions, privacy, content management, reliability, performance, and XenForo integration.
Due to the security fixes included in this release, 2.3.0 is available to all licensed customers. An active renewal is not required to download this update.
Important: This version now requires
[XB] Core Library 1.0.1+.
The Core Library also adds an optional xenBaker branding link to the badges help page and member badge tab. The branding is enabled by default and can be disabled in the add-on options without payment.
Important: Due to the scope of this update and the number of internal changes, some existing functionality or third-party integrations may be affected. Creating a full backup before upgrading is strongly recommended.
New features:
- Added soft deletion and edit/delete time limits for photo comments
- Added style properties for group directory layouts, group pages, images, placeholders, sidebars, and header statistics
- Added sensible default user group permissions for new installations and upgrades
Improvements:
- General code refactor
- Redesigned the group directory with a responsive card layout
- Redesigned group pages with improved banners, avatars, metadata, navigation, owner tools, and Join/Leave actions
- Improved group creation, editing, information, and action forms with reusable components
- Improved group membership, invitation, request, approval, ownership transfer, and moderator management workflows
- Improved discussion and reply handling, including visibility, moderation, pagination, counters, last-post data, quoting, likes, drafts, and quick replies
- Improved photo and comment handling, including visibility, editing, deletion, file cleanup, and permission consistency
- Improved event and calendar handling, including multi-day and open-ended events, date ranges, visibility, and editing permissions
- Improved group forum and subforum management, including access restrictions, ownership validation, permissions, counters, and node changes
- Improved XenForo Media Gallery integration with consistent group privacy and permission handling
- Improved search, alerts, activity feeds, widgets, directories, and public content navigation to consistently respect group and content visibility
- Improved compatibility with XenForo's standard permission, entity, repository, service, controller, and content lifecycle behavior
- Improved image and file handling, including WEBP support, external data storage, replacement safety, and cleanup
- Improved data integrity during concurrent membership and content changes with safer counter and transaction handling
- Improved background cleanup and deletion processes for group content and related data
- Moved shared FullCalendar assets and styling to [XB] Core Library.
Bug fixes:
- Fixed numerous permission issues affecting groups, discussions, replies, photos, comments, events, forums, subforums, polls, and media
- Fixed restricted and private group content being exposed through certain pages, searches, alerts, feeds, widgets, calendars, and listings
- Fixed actions on group content not always verifying that the requested content belonged to the specified group
- Fixed own-content permissions incorrectly allowing some actions on content created by other users
- Fixed administrator access sometimes bypassing the dedicated Social Groups administrator permission
- Fixed membership and invitation actions that could bypass group visibility, membership limits, pending requests, or invitation requirements
- Fixed group ownership, moderator, member, and membership counters becoming inconsistent in certain workflows
- Fixed discussion, reply, thread, post, participant, photo, and last-post counters becoming incorrect after creation, deletion, restoration, moderation, or thread moves
- Fixed deleted or moderated discussions, replies, photos, and other content appearing where they should not be visible
- Fixed group forums and subforums being modified, moved, accessed, or deleted without sufficient group ownership validation
- Fixed private and restricted group events being accessible through certain event and calendar endpoints
- Fixed several photo and comment permission, visibility, editing, deletion, and cross-group access issues
- Fixed several discussion and reply permission, visibility, editing, deletion, quoting, liking, and draft access issues
- Fixed several Media Gallery permission and privacy issues affecting group categories, media, and comments
- Fixed missing or invalid groups, users, discussions, photos, events, forums, and related records causing errors instead of standard permission or not-found responses
- Fixed photo, banner, and category image files not always being created, replaced, or removed correctly
- Fixed group deletion leaving some associated photo files or related data behind
- Fixed upgrades from older Social Groups versions missing required database changes
- Fixed alphabetical group filtering for non-Latin names
- Fixed localized widget titles and several missing or incorrect interface labels
- Fixed several legacy compatibility issues, including Font Awesome 5 icons and XenForo service definitions
- Fixed malformed or missing cached permissions and settings potentially causing errors
- Fixed several security issues involving unauthorized content access, state-changing GET requests, unsafe input handling, and Map BB code output
Performance:
- Reduced redundant and repeated database queries across group discussions, members, notifications, and permission checks
- Improved notification processing by batching watcher lookups
- Improved large group deletion and cleanup jobs with batched and bulk operations
- Improved counter updates and concurrent membership/content operations
- Reduced unnecessary entity loading and repeated group lookups
