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

 

[Arantor]

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.

I just figure it’d good to be perfectly clear on what is actually being sent and what is being recorded.

 

[Slavik]

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

Anything and everything we "collect" (which is purely for stat reasons such as knowing when to bump up versions or see what adoption rates are currently) is communicated and opt out. You can likewise verify what is collected by directly examining the code.

 

[Forsaken]

I just figure it’d good to be perfectly clear on what is actually being sent and what is being recorded.

Yeah I figured, however they're already pretty good about opt-in and about the information so it would likely be in the same vein.

Definitely not like Matt's data collection, which was something he outright denied in the recent past.

 

[digitalpoint]

Fantastic news!



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?

WordPress sucks. How ever they do things, it's general a good rule of thumb to not do it that way. I definitely wouldn't be looking to how WordPress does anything.

 

[Chris D]

Yeah I figured, however they're already pretty good about opt-in and about the information so it would likely be in the same vein.

Definitely not like Matt's data collection, which was something he outright denied in the recent past.

Well, just to be clear, this is actually more adjacent to the XF upgrade checking via the license API key than the anonymous usage statistics.

That is not opt out. The add-on update check does the same license checks that checking for XF upgrades does which is covered in the license agreement:

Automated checks may be used to verify your License, including but not limited to installations reporting their usage to Us.

The add-on IDs are sent to us but they are not recorded or logged.

 

[Gemma]

Is it wrong that I'm more excited by the "demo scratchpad notepad thingy" than the addon notifications addon?

Anyway, nice addition. I'm about to resume my XF2.3 upgrade build so looking forward to this (and thingy) sometime soon.

 

[Chris D]

I might be wrong but I think that’s the demo add-on from one of @Kier’s developer tutorials.

So probably not something we would release but you could build it yourself if you sit through @Kier’s tutorials

 

[Arantor]

Well, just to be clear, this is actually more adjacent to the XF upgrade checking via the license API key than the anonymous usage statistics.

That is not opt out. The add-on update check does the same license checks that checking for XF upgrades does which is covered in the license agreement:



The add-on IDs are sent to us but they are not recorded or logged.

This is good to know, thank you.

I mean, checking the licence is of course a thing that you're doing (and should be) - but I'm sure you can understand my point in light of what WordPress has been doing, and in particular doing with the acquired knowledge from this specific activity.

Again, I am not implying or suggesting that you'd ever do this - I have no reason to assume bad faith whatsoever - but let's just say I've been on the receiving end of customers' ire on this subject and it has made me more paranoid.

 

[Chris D]

Naturally the information we get from verifying the license should match up with the information we already hold for the license to be valid.

In other words we are really only storing the board URL the callback comes from which should match the board URL you specified when activating the license.

I guess the only extra thing we sometimes store in the logs beyond that is the URLs for dev installations etc.

But yeah it’s all for the purposes of license validation and predominantly stuff we already know.

 

[Gemma]

you could build it yourself if you sit through @Kier’s tutorials

I think my diary is fully booked with paint-drying sessions.

 

[Chris D]

Ouch. I have to check but that could be a breach of the license agreement.

 

[Slavik]

 

[DragonByte Tech]

For the record; what I'll be logging when I create an add-on to the 2.4 upgrade checker:

• API key used
• dragonbyte-tech.com user ID the API key belongs to
• Public-facing IP address the request originates from
• URL of the website
• XenForo version

Of course, this will be detailed in that add-on's thread as well. I wouldn't bury it here as the only place to find it, but since we're on the topic of data logging, I figured I'd throw it out there

 

[Alpha1]

Hopefully Style update notifications HYS is coming soon.

Having an update all button would be nice. I use it almost every day for WordPress.

 

[smallwheels]

@Chris D : This sounds like brilliant news! Will this incorporate the installed XF version and this way solve the issue that AUN has, alarming for updates that are not compatible with the currently installed XF version? I.e. currently, while running XF 2.2.16 one gets alarms for add on updates that require XF 2.3 to be installable.

BTW: AUN also notifies about upgrades of paid addons. If the built-in XF-solution would not do that it would clearly be a step backwards.

 

[Chris D]

We don't, in its current form, check compatible XF versions, unfortunately.

You would get notified about paid add-ons too as long as they are listed in the resource manager here.

 

[smallwheels]

We don't, in its current form, check compatible XF versions, unfortunately.

Consider this as a feature request for an update before it's even released! The lack thereof is a total pita for many, as already discussed for a while in the AUN add on thread. Should be way easier to implement for XF than for @mazzly, the more if you already require new info from add on devs:

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.

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?

This would be awesome!

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.

The latter is more a fully loaded app store (which has all sorts of up- and downsides and requires relevant effort no matter what). May be nice or not - but is clearly out of scope atm.
The plain info part, preferrably inc. downloading (but w/o actually selling add ons) should be easier and it would be totally cool if for paid add ons the (individual) info was included until when the paid upgrade period lasts.
You do not have that info, but if the mechanism would pull it from the dev's sites directly via API call it should be possible relatively easily and at the same time foster acceptance by the devs as it will foster their sales of license extensions for their add ons.

 

[DarkGizmo]

Awesome, a 2.4 update. Sounds great for add-on devs.

 

[Chris D]

Sounds great for add-on devs.

This is more of a quality-of-life improvement for admins, not really add-on developers.

 

[smallwheels]

This is more of a quality-of-life improvement for admins, not really add-on developers.

If it works well it will also be for add-on developers, as support requests for issues that have already been solved by a newer add-on version ("oh, didn't realize that there is a newer version than I have installed") will probably go down.