Release Notes

This chapter has important information for releases in it. If you’re upgrading from a previous release, please read it carefully, or at least skim over it.

0.4.0

Do this to upgrade 1. Make sure to run bin/gmg dbupdate after upgrading. 2. See “For Theme authors” if you have a custom theme. 3. Note that ./bin/gmg theme assetlink is now just

./bin/gmg assetlink and covers both plugins and assets. Keep on reading to hear more about new plugin features.

  1. If you want to take advantage of new plugins that have statically served assets, you are going to need to add the new “plugin_static” section to your nginx config. Basically the following for nginx:

    # Plugin static files (usually symlinked in)
location /plugin_static/ {
   alias /srv/mediagoblin.example.org/mediagoblin/user_dev/plugin_static/;
}

    Similarly, if you’ve got a modified paste config, you may want to borrow the app:plugin_static section from the default paste.ini file.

  2. We now use itsdangerous for sessions; if you had any references to beaker in your paste config you can remove them. Again, see the default paste.ini config

For theme authors

If you have your own theme or you have any “user modified templates”, please note the following:

  • mediagoblin/bits/ files above-content.html, body-end.html, body-start.html now are renamed… they have underscores instead of dashes in the filenames now :)

  • There’s a new file: mediagoblin/bits/frontpage_welcome.html. You can easily customize this to give a welcome page appropriate to your site.

New features * PDF media type! * Improved plugin system. More flexible, better documented, with a

new plugin authoring section of the docs.

  • itsdangerous based sessions. No more beaker!

  • New, experimental Piwigo-based API. This means you should be able to use MediaGoblin with something like Shotwell. (Again, a word of caution: this is very experimental!)

  • Human readable timestamps, and the option to display the original date of an image when available (available as the “original_date_visible” variable)

  • Moved unit testing system from nosetests to py.test so we can better handle issues with sqlalchemy exploding with different database configurations. Long story :)

  • You can now disable the ability to post comments.

  • Tags now can be up to length 255 characters by default.

0.3.3

Do this to upgrade

  1. Make sure to run bin/gmg dbupdate after upgrading.

  2. OpenStreetMap is now a plugin, so if you want to use it, add the following to your config file:

    [plugins]
[[mediagoblin.plugins.geolocation]]

If you have your own theme, you may need to make some adjustments to it as some theme related things may have changed in this release. If you run into problems, don’t hesitate to contact us (IRC is often best).

New features

  • New dropdown menu for accessing various features.

  • Significantly improved URL generation. Now mediagoblin won’t give up on making a slug if it looks like there will be a duplicate; it’ll try extra hard to generate a meaningful one instead.

    Similarly, linking to an id no longer can possibly conflict with linking to a slug; /u/username/m/id:35/ is the kind of reference we now use to linking to entries with ids. However, old links with entries that linked to ids should work just fine with our migration. The only urls that might break in this release are ones using colons or equal signs.

  • New template hooks for plugin authoring.

  • As a demonstration of new template hooks for plugin authoring, openstreetmap support now moved to a plugin!

  • Method to add media to collections switched from icon of paperclip to button with “add to collection” text.

  • Bug where videos often failed to produce a proper thumbnail fixed!

  • Copying around files in MediaGoblin now much more efficient, doesn’t waste gobs of memory.

  • Video transcoding now optional for videos that meet certain criteria. By default, MediaGoblin will not transcode webm videos that are smaller in resolution than the MediaGoblin defaults, and MediaGoblin can also be configured to allow theora files to not be transcoded as well.

  • Per-user license preference option; always want your uploads to be BY-SA and tired of changing that field? You can now set your license preference in your user settings.

  • Video player now responsive; better for mobile!

  • You can now delete your account from the user preferences page if you so wish.

Other changes

  • Plugin writers: Internal restructuring led to mediagoblin.db.sql* be mediagoblin.db.* starting from 0.3.3

  • Dependency list has been reduced not requiring the “webob” package anymore.

  • And many small fixes/improvements, too numerous to list!

0.3.2

This will be the last release that is capable of converting from an earlier MongoDB-based MediaGoblin instance to the newer SQL-based system.

Do this to upgrade

# directory of your mediagoblin install cd /srv/mediagoblin.example.org

# copy source for this release git fetch git checkout tags/v0.3.2

# perform any needed database updates bin/gmg dbupdate

# restart your servers however you do that, e.g., sudo service mediagoblin-paster restart sudo service mediagoblin-celeryd restart

New features

  • 3d model support!

    You can now upload STL and OBJ files and display them in MediaGoblin. Requires a recent-ish Blender; for details see: Deploying MediaGoblin

  • trim_whitespace

    We bundle the optional plugin trim_whitespace which reduces the size of the delivered html output by reducing redundant whitespace.

    See Part 2: Core plugin documentation for plugin documentation

  • A new API!

    It isn’t well documented yet but we do have an API. There is an android application in progress which makes use of it, and there are some demo applications between automgtic, an automatic media uploader for your desktop and OMGMG, an example of a web application hooking up to the API.

    This is a plugin, so you have to enable it in your mediagoblin config file by adding a section under [plugins] like:

    [plugins]
[[mediagoblin.plugins.api]]

    Note that the API works but is not nailed down… the way it is called may change in future releases.

  • OAuth login support

    For applications that use OAuth to connect to the API.

    This is a plugin, so you have to enable it in your mediagoblin config file by adding a section under [plugins] like:

    [plugins]
[[mediagoblin.plugins.oauth]]

  • Collections

    We now have user-curated collections support. These are arbitrary galleries that are customizable by users. You can add media to these by clicking on the paperclip icon when logged in and looking at a media entry.

  • OpenStreetMap licensing display improvements

    More accurate display of OSM licensing, and less disruptive: you click to “expand” the display of said licensing.

    Geolocation is also now on by default.

  • Miscelaneous visual improvements

    We’ve made a number of small visual improvements including newer and nicer looking thumbnails and improved checkbox placement.

0.3.1

Do this to upgrade

  1. Make sure to run bin/gmg dbuptdate after upgrading.

  2. If you set up your server config with an older version of mediagoblin and the mediagoblin docs, it’s possible you don’t have the “theme static files” alias, so double check to make sure that section is there if you are having problems.

New features

  • theming support

    MediaGoblin now also includes theming support, which you can read about in the section Theming MediaGoblin.

  • flatpages

    MediaGoblin has a flatpages plugin allowing you to add pages that are aren’t media-related like “About this site…”, “Terms of service…”, etc.

    See Part 2: Core plugin documentation for plugin documentation

0.3.0

This release has one important change. You need to act when upgrading from a previous version!

This release changes the database system from MongoDB to SQL(alchemy). If you want to setup a fresh instance, just follow the instructions in the deployment chapter. If on the other hand you want to continue to use one instance, read on.

To convert your data from MongoDB to SQL(alchemy), you need to follow these steps:

  1. Make sure your MongoDB is still running and has your data, it’s needed for the conversion.

  2. Configure the sql_engine URI in the config to represent your target database (see: Deploying MediaGoblin)

  3. You need an empty database.

  4. Then run the following command:

    bin/gmg [-cf mediagoblin_config.ini] convert_mongo_to_sql

  5. Start your server and investigate.

  6. That’s it.