Website Redesign

By now you’ve probably noticed the new website design, the reason for this was to try and organize things a little nicer and make things easier.  A few important things have changed.  The download section has been changed and is now called “Add-Ons”, which is where I hope to put all the Mods, Themes and Translations for FCMS.  The actual download of FCMS will be in the new Download section.  Here you will be able to download the latest version and past versions and up and coming versions.  Today I put up a release candidate for FCMS 2.3, but please remember this is unstable and still has some bugs.  I don’t really recommend you upgrading just yet, but feel free to download it and check out some of the new stuff.

Testing

I know in the past some of you have said you would be intereasted in helping out with the testing of FCMS 2.3, well now is the time.  I have the latest copy of FCMS 2.3 setup on a development site for anyone who wants to help test, leave me a comment on this post and I’ll create an account for you.

Hopefully this will only last a day or two, with most of the major issues being resolved today/tonight.

Thanks for your patience.

Importing Addresses into Family Connections

Family Connections currently supports importing CSV files from Gmail, Outlook and of course Family Connections.

To import addresses, simply navigate to the Address Book and click on the Import link in the top right hand corner.

Next, browse your computer for the .csv file that you exported from Gmail, Outlook or FCMS (see the exporting section for more info).

At this point, you can choose to make the addresses private by selecting the Private option (this will make all addresses in the CSV file private).

Finally, click the import button.  You will receive a success message when the import is complete.

CSV File requirements

Below is some detailed information on exactly how the CSV file should be formatted.  Please note that if you are importing from Gmail, Outlook or FCMS you can ignore this section because your CSV file will be formatted correctly.  This information is only needed for user’s who are trying to import data from hand or from another unsupported source.

The following list contains the data that Family Connections accepts, followed by the allowable field names for that data:

• First Name
  • fname
  • First Name
  • Given Name
• Last Name
  • lname
  • Last Name
  • Family Name
• Email
  • email
  • E-mail Address
  • E-mail 1 – Value
• Street Address
  • address
  • Home Street
  • Address 1 – Street
• City
  • Home City
  • Address 1 – City
• State
  • state
  • Home State
  • Address 1 – Region
• Postal Code
  • zip
  • Home Postal Code
  • Address 1 – Postal Code
• Home Phone Number
  • home
  • Home Phone
• Work Phone Number
  • work
  • Business Phone
• Cell Phone Number
  • cell
  • Mobile Phone

Exporting Addresses from Family Connections

Exporting Addresses is as easy as clicking on the Export button on the Address Book page.

After clicking Export, you will be prompted to save the CSV file.

Exporting from Gmail

See this tutorial on how to export contacts from Gmail.

Exporting from Outlook

See this tutorial from About.com.

See this tutorial from Microsoft.

Option 1

At first it was going to just be a way to list relationships like spouse, and kids.  But I decided that that wasn’t good enough, because it wouldn’t link the users together, and wouldn’t add much value.

Option 2

And then I decided to just do a full blown genealogy system.  But that seemed like overkill, and would take more development time then it would add value.  I even looked into integrating existing tools to do this for me, but most of them were too big and too difficult to use/setup and integrate/maintain in FCMS.

Solution

So ultimately I decided on a kind of hybrid approach.  A very lightweight genealogy system, that you could view in both a relationship list form (on your profile) and also view in a nice Family Tree form.  Unlike most genealogy systems FCMS’ won’t include things like adding notes and pictures and some of the more complex features associated with a genealogy tool.  Instead, this will be used more for just showing relationships between friends and family.  Technically it could still be used the same way as other tools, but that’s not it’s main focus right now.

Below is a quick example of how it currently looks (some minor changes may occur before it’s released).  As you can tell from the screenshots, the tree will only show up to two levels of relationships.  For example: your parents, and their parents.  You will be able to view other member’s Tree’s and also add members to your Tree that aren’t currently members of the website.

Click here for a larger screenshot.

What Do you Think

As always, I’d love to hear what everyone thinks of the proposed Family Tree.  Any suggestions, things you like or don’t like? Leave a comment below.

Advanced Image Uploader

Turning it On

The first thing you need to do is turn on the Advanced Uploader. This can be done by going to My Settings, scrolling down to the Advanced Uploader section, selecting the Yes option, and Submitting those changes.

Uploading Photos

Uploading photos with the Advanced Uploader starts out exactly the same as before.  Simply go to the Photo Gallery like normal, and click Upload Photos.

Security Warning

If this is the first time you have used the Advanced Uploader you will probably get a security warning.  Currently the Advanced Uploader is signed with a self issued (untrusted) certificate.  Typically a real certificate would be purchased and you wouldn’t see this error, but unfortunately a certificate can cost several hundred dollars and in order to keep Family Connections free, I will not be providing a certificate (you could always purchase one for your site though.

If you check the “Always trust content from this publisher” box, then you will only see this message once per computer.

Choosing A Category

Just like the basic uploader, all photos uploaded to the Photo Gallery need to be placed in a category.  If you don’t have any existing categories you will need to create one first.  Once you’ve created a category, simply select that category from the dropdown list above the Advanced Uploader.

Adding Photos to be Uploaded

The Advanced Uploader can upload multiple photos at a time, or one at a time.  To add a file to be uploaded, click the green Add button.  A window will pop up, allowing you to choose one or more photos to upload.

Editing Added Photos

The Advanced Uploader allows you to rotate, crop and change the colorscheme of an image.  Simply click on the little paintbrush on the bottom right hand corner of the image you want to edit, make your changes, then click the Save icon.

Uploading Photos

When you’re done editing, and adding photos to be uploaded, simply click the Start Upload button found at the bottom left hand side of the screen.  A progress bar will start, showing you how long it will take to upload the photos, this could take a second for just a few photos, or up to a few minutes if you’re uploading a bunch of photos.

Adding Captions & Tagging

After the photos have been uploaded you will be brought to a screen to add captions and tag any member in each photo.  At this point, the photos have been added to the Photo Gallery whether or not you add captions.  When you’ve added your captions and tagged any members, click the Submit button and you will be redirected to the Photo Gallery Home page.

That’s it.

This release fixes a few issues with messed up dates/times and also fixes some language issues, however an issue still exists for PHP4 only, see below for more info.

The following bugs were fixed:

#171 - Invalid password in session/cookie prevents login
#172 – undefined escape_string during Installation
#173 – Add Comment Error File: gallery/index.php [423]
#174 – Calendar dates don’t obey timezones
#178 – Avatar too big on Family News comments
#181 – php-gettext as failback solution

PHP4 only php-gettext bug (undefined index: messages)

Error
Undefined index:  messages
Where: on line 190 in /inc/gettext.inc
Environment: PHP 4.4.9 (Linux)

Currently php-gettext is NOT compatible with PHP4 which causes user’s to see the error message above.  See bug id #554199 on the php-gettext site for more info.

Solutions:

If your host has gettext support:
You should be able to comment out line 190 in the inc/gettext.inc file and that error will go away.  You should also be able to use other languages other than English without problems.

If you host does NOT have gettext support:
Your only real solution until this bug is fixed, is to upgrade to PHP5.  However if you are only using English on your site, you could comment out line 190 in the inc/gettext.inc file and the site will work fine although it will have some noticeable issues, including the small calendar showing up weird among other minor issues.  The main functionality of the site should still work fine.

You may have noticed a lot of security related issues being found and fixed lately.  The reason for this is because of a bad decision on my part:  see most of the security related issues were only exploitable if the exploiter had a valid username/password, so that means that only someone who you’ve allowed to join your site could cause damage or do bad things.  This is the main reason why I have ignored most of these issues in the past.  But that’s a bad way to view things, and more importantly it’s bad programming.

So that’s why I went through and fixed all the issues I could find and then did an audit of the codebase to fix any potential security issues that haven’t been found yet.  So if you don’t let anyone login to your site but family, upgrading to FCMS 2.2.2 isn’t crucial, but it’s still recommended, just to be on the safe side.

FCMS 2.2.2

Download it now, or visit the downloads section.

This release fixes a few security issues.

The following bugs were fixed:

#160 – Login ID SQL Injections
#166 – File Upload Vulnerability
#167 – Directory Traversal Vulnerability
#168 – Audit sql queries for SQL Injections

Themes

For the new themes I was thinking about creating about 5 new themes with specific “themes” in mind, something like a Christmas theme or Birthday, that type of thing, then I would create a few more simple basic themes similar to the alpha and beta themes from previous versions.

FCMS 2.3

The major additions in the next release will be a new Family Tree section, and a overhaul to the profile section.  The profile section will include Facebook like status updates, more options like a bio and links to other social media accounts, as well as a complete overhaul of the Ranks functionality.

The downloads for 2.2.1 had a bug in the gallery/index.php which has now been fixed.

Download it now, or visit the downloads section.

This release fixes a few security issues.

The following bugs were fixed:

#157 – FCMS 2.2: bad link on calendar…
#150 – Register SQL Injections
#159 – upimages.php Arbitrary Code Execution
#160 – Theme Settings Vulnerability
#161 – Secunia Advisory SA35039

Currently the best way to help is to check out the new translation page.

Also, I’ve added a couple of new tutorials to the Documentation about translating FCMS:

Translating a New Language
FCMS in Your Language