XF 2.4 Add-on update notifications

Welcome to the first "Have you seen...?" post for XenForo 2.4! As we discussed a couple of months ago, XenForo 2.4 will focus mainly on quality-of-life improvements for admins, moderators and users, and today's first look at our next version absolutely ticks that box.

Occasionally the inspiration for new features doesn't solely come from the suggestions forum and at times we sit up and take notice of what is popular in the Resource Manager. In this particular case, the Add-on update notifier by @mazzly caught our attention as not only being widely sought after but also currently one of the highest rated resources so it appears to fill a need for enough of you that we decided to bring it to everyone.

Once we roll out XenForo 2.4 here, resource authors will find that we have added a new field to resources in add-on categories that will allow you to fill in your add-on ID. When you install XenForo 2.4 on your own forums, your forum will now periodically call back to XF.com with a list of your installed add-ons and their versions and report back with the latest version available in the Resource Manager. Where there is an update available, as demonstrated above, this will be indicated in your add-ons list.

Update checking can be enabled under "Basic board options".

Subject to time constraints, we are looking to add the following additional functionality either before or shortly after the release of XenForo 2.4:

• Improved notifications
• Custom update checking URLs for developers to populate in their addon.json file so if the canonical source of your add-on is on your own website, we can request version details from there rather than our resource manager
• One-click install of upgrades (for free add-ons)

We hope you've enjoyed this first look at improvements to managing your add-ons in XenForo 2.4. As ever, please create a new suggestion if you have any specific ideas for improvements beyond what is mentioned above.

To reiterate our previous comments, the release of these "Have you seen...?" posts will be somewhat sporadic over the coming weeks. We're aiming to get these updates out to you as they happen rather than waiting for the majority of XenForo 2.4 to be complete. But, as it happens, the next one isn't too far away

 

[FTL]

When you install XenForo 2.4 on your own forums, your forum will now periodically call back to XF.com with a list of your installed add-ons and their versions and report back with the latest version available in the Resource Manager. Where there is an update available, as demonstrated above, this will be indicated in your add-ons list.

XenForo Update. I like it!

 

[KSA]

One-click install of upgrades (for free add-ons)

This.


Thank you in advance.

 

[BassMan]

Yes, yes, bloody yes!

 

[JamesBrown]

Nice one. I love that Mazzly addon

 

[nocte]

Great addition!

 

[Chris D]

Nice one. I love that Mazzly addon

@mazzly did a great job. We let him know a while ago that this was coming and congratulated him on a fine piece of work.

 

[Alpha1]

Awesome!

 

[Forsaken]

While I am excited for this... I am more excited to see people shut up .

 

[Wildcat Media]

Yassss! This gets rid of a major pain point in maintaining our forums.

 

[Forsaken]

Yassss! This gets rid of a major pain point in maintaining our forums.

It is also an older suggestion! More things for people to shut up about!

 

[Wildcat Media]

It is also an older suggestion! More things for people to shut up about!

Pretty sure I was smashin' that updoot button regularly.

 

[DragonByte Tech]

Custom update checking URLs for developers to populate in their addon.json file so if the canonical source of your add-on is on your own website, we can request version details from there rather than our resource manager

Are you able to give any details on the expected return format, e.g. plain text version number (similar to how vBulletin's update checking worked) or a JSON payload? I'd like to pre-build support for this into eCommerce

One-click install of upgrades (for free add-ons)

Will this be easily extendable such that we're able to create "<vendor> Update Essentials" to include our own API keys for fetching one-click upgrades from our own sites?

 

[RobinHood]

Fantastic news!

One-click install of upgrades (for free add-ons)

Is there any reason why add on authors wouldn't be able to use the system to push updates to paid add-ons?

Just comparing to WordPress where I presume most of the paid add ons I have utilise the core 'free add on' update system to a certain extent.

Not sure how it works behind the scenes with paid add on's though.

Perhaps someone with more WordPress plugin experience such as @kolakube @digitalpoint might know how it works for paid plugins in that ecosystem and how it extends the core add on update system?

 

[Chris D]

Well, we don’t host the files or know what licenses a customer has. We can only go on what we store here in the RM which is free resources only.

Centralising payment, hosting and licensing is something that could be considered in the future.

But I would expect a lot of vendors wouldn’t necessarily want to use a central system and would prefer to use their own systems as they do now.

Which kind of ties in to what @DragonByte Tech is asking about. That’s probably more achievable in the shorter term than centralising everything.

 

[DragonByte Tech]

Is there any reason why add on authors wouldn't be able to use the system to push updates to paid add-ons?

If I had to guess, by default it'll only be able to fetch XFRM updates from xenforo.com that have a direct download.

Unless the devs have a brainfart and forget to make this update downloader extendable, it would be a simple enough task to create our own "Update Essentials" that - in my case at least - will let you enter your DBTech API key and I can use it along with an embedded license key to fetch the update

I already did with ThemeHouse's old Install & Upgrade I think it was called, so I'm looking forward to resurrecting that code path

 

[JoyFreak]

Look forward to what’s to come great job guys.

 

[Suzanne O]

Looking forward to seeing this happen.

 

[Arantor]

Question: will the call home include details about the forum beyond what plugins are installed, and will the contents be logged by XF servers?

I ask because this has been a question in the WordPress drama and while I have no reason at all to assume bad faith, I’m finding myself a little paranoid, and transparency is important in matters like this.

(The WP drama is that when it phones home to check updates, it gives out the URL, PHP version and plenty more, enabling Wordpress to track every install, its real IP address and more.)

 

[Forsaken]

Question: will the call home include details about the forum beyond what plugins are installed, and will the contents be logged by XF servers?

I ask because this has been a question in the WordPress drama and while I have no reason at all to assume bad faith, I’m finding myself a little paranoid, and transparency is important in matters like this.

(The WP drama is that when it phones home to check updates, it gives out the URL, PHP version and plenty more, enabling Wordpress to track every install, its real IP address and more.)

Send anonymous usage statistics

XenForo would like to collect some anonymous statistics including information about PHP, MySQL and your XenForo installation.

If enabled, any data collected will be stored anonymously and will not include any user data.

Existing opt-in setting for XF, so it would likely be something similar to that.