WriteFreely

Today we're happy to release WriteFreely v0.10, one of our largest updates yet.

This is a pretty important release for us. It brings together improvements driven by our thoughtful community and features that'll help us take the next step into our future — namely, one where WriteFreely helps organizations and groups effortlessly communicate via simple, open source tools.

For anyone running WriteFreely, this means more control over your community, starting with more customization in this version and better moderation in the next. Really, this is just the start. Let's jump in.

Major Features

Fully Private Instances (T576)

Communities looking for more privacy can now start up WriteFreely instances meant only for internal use. Just enable the private config value to make all blogs and content accessible only to authenticated users in your instance.

NOTE: this is a breaking change! This changes behavior for existing instances with the private config value already set to true. If you have it set, you should verify that the new behavior is what you want.

Landing Page Customization (T565, T574)

Now admins have two new ways to customize their multi-user instance:

Editing your landing page. Now you can change the content of your landing page from the Admin dashboard, including the banner text to the left of the signup form and the optional text below.

Changing the landing URL. For anyone who doesn't want to use their normal landing page — such as with closed or invite-only instances — this lets you set the URL that unauthenticated users go to when they first come to your site. For example, you might send them to your About page (/about) or your public Reader (/read).

User-Facing Changes / Fixes

• Add Lithuanian translation (writeas/web-core#3)
• Fix changing RTL setting back to LTR from web UI (#103, #110)
• Fix federation with pubgate (#100, #111, #116)
• Include pinned posts in JSON export (#112)
• Include post title in exported txt files (#114)
• Fix same-size 1st- and 2nd-level headings on blog index (#82)
• Fix post deletion logic needed for WriteFreely CLI (#117)
• Fix C syntax highlighting (#124)
• Fix default background-color not set (#132)
• Fix inconsistent naming / icons on post metadata page

Admin-Facing Changes

• Landing URL is now editable (T574)
• The private config option now makes an instance readable only by registered, authenticated users (T576)
• New upgrade script
• The --config command now automatically initializes the database, removing the need for --init-db during setup
• Specify which part of the app configuration you want to edit with the new --sections flag, e.g. writefreely --config --section="app db server"
• Landing page is now customizable (T565)

Developer-Facing Changes

• Fix lessc installation on macOS and CentOS (#97, #99)
• MathJax library is now a git submodule instead of directly included
• The writefreely.Serve() func has been split out into multiple functions
• Flag handling has moved out of the writefreely pkg to cmd/writefreely/main.go

Upgrading from v0.9.x

Download the latest release for your operating system. Stop running your writefreely service, replace all files in your installation with the ones in the archive, and then start your writefreely service again.

No additional steps are needed to upgrade from v0.9.x. Follow the instructions in each previous #release if you're upgrading from an earlier version.

Developers

If you are running a custom build, note that there were style changes in this release. Run make ui to generate the latest stylesheets.

Contributors

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release!

@dariusk @gytisrepecka @robjloranger @joyeusenoelle @sandrockcstm @qwazix @mrvdb

#WriteFreely