Change News Dates & Times, Carousel Slider, Avatar Display Toggle, and More!
We’re excited to bring you another feature update this month, packed with powerful new features, styling improvements, and bug fixes to enhance your news publishing experience!
One of the major updates in this release is the ability to change news dates and times. Admins and editorial teams can now modify both the publish date & time and the last edit date & time, ensuring greater flexibility and accuracy when managing news stories. To maintain consistency, the system prevents setting a last update date before the publish date, and future-dated entries are restricted. Additionally, full timezone support has been added, ensuring accurate timestamp conversions across different regions.
We have also introduced two new display styles for the "Latest News" widget! You can now showcase your latest news using a Carousel Slider, a dynamic scrolling display that enhances user engagement. Additionally, we’ve added a Carousel Slider (Card Grid) option, which retains the structured layout of the Card Grid while incorporating the interactive slider effect. These new styles are not designed for sidebar positions but work beautifully in larger widget areas.
Another requested feature in this update is the Avatar Display Toggle. A new style property now allows admins to enable or disable avatars across all display modes, including Card Grid, Compact List, Expanded List, and Standout Card Grid. This provides greater customization and control without needing to edit templates.
To improve the Card Grid display mode, we have also fixed an issue where news titles could wrap unexpectedly, ensuring a more consistent layout. Additionally, Open Graph and Twitter card images now usegetCoverImage()
instead ofgetThumbnailUrl()
, improving the accuracy of image selection when sharing news on social media.
Finally, this release includes several important bug fixes, addressing issues with category permissions, missing email templates, and missing phrases. These fixes ensure smoother functionality and a more polished experience for both admins and users.
Special thanks to @80sDude and @SeriousRat for commissioning the new features.
Upgrade today and enjoy the latest improvements. As always, we appreciate your feedback, and if you find this update useful, don’t forget to leave a review!
- Change News Dates & Times
- Added the ability to modify the news publish date & time.
- Added the ability to update the last edit date & time for accurate record-keeping.
- Ensured that the last update date cannot be set before the publish date.
- Implemented restrictions on future-dated entries for consistency.
- Timezone support added to ensure accurate timestamp conversions based on the user’s timezone.
- Latest News Widget: New Display Styles
- Carousel Slider: A dynamic slider-based display for showcasing recent news. (Not designed for sidebar positions.)
- Carousel Slider (Card Grid): A slider using the Card Grid display mode for a more visually engaging layout.
- Avatar Display Toggle
- Added a style property setting to toggle avatars on or off in all display modes.
- Available separately for: Card Grid, Compact List, Expanded List, and Standout Card Grid.
- Provides per-style control without needing template edits.
- Styling Improvements for Card Grid Display Mode
- Prevented news title from wrapping unexpectedly, ensuring layouts remain intact.
- News view page now prioritizes the
description
field overmessage
for metadata snippets.- Open Graph and Twitter card images now use
getCoverImage()
instead ofgetThumbnailUrl()
, providing a more reliable fallback for news thumbnails.- Fixed category permission classes not matching the correct formatter pattern.
- Fixed missing template causing the error: "
Template email:xcu_nwp_watched_news_update is unknown
".- Fixed a missing phrase on News category permission page.
- Fixed a couple of missing phrases
xcu_nwp_news_x_watched_news_updated
andxcu_nwp_watched_news_update_email_html
.
XenCustomize News Publisher 2.3.7 is Here!
We’re excited to bring you version 2.3.7, packed with powerful new features, improvements, and important bug fixes! The highlight of this release is the Scheduled News Publication featurecommissioned by @80sDude, allowing users to choose whether to publish news instantly or schedule it for a future date and time — complete with timezone selection! Moderators also get a new "View scheduled news" permission, and a dedicated "Your Scheduled News" page makes managing upcoming news stories easier. A cron job ensures that scheduled news is automatically published every 5 minutes (triggered by site activity).
Beyond scheduling, we've enhanced search autocomplete results by ensuring that the best available news thumbnail is always displayed. Additionally, news thumbnails in compact mode, search results, and tag pages now maintain their correct aspect ratio for a cleaner look.
Navigation also gets a refresh! The "Your News Stories" link has been renamed to "Your News" and is now a dropdown menu. Inside, you'll find "Your Published News" (previously "Your News Stories") and a brand-new "Your Scheduled News" link for quick access.
Of course, no update is complete without bug fixes! We’ve addressed missing phrases, resolved template errors, and fixed a moderator action alert issue where alerts were increasing the count but not appearing in the list. Everything should now work smoothly!
Special thanks to @80sDude for commissioning the Scheduled News Publication Feature.
Get ready to schedule your news stories, enjoy a more polished experience, and take advantage of these exciting improvements!Full changelog below:
Scheduled News Publication
- Added new Publication options on the news creation page, allowing users to choose between:
- Publish Now – Make news live immediately upon submission.
- Schedule Publication – Set a future date, time, and time zone for automatic publishing (must be in the future).
- Added a "Scheduled" label next to news titles for clear identification.
- Added a block status message to indicate scheduled news.
- Added a "Reschedule Publication" (pencil icon) button for quick rescheduling.
- Added a "Publish Now" button to immediately publish a scheduled news item.
- Added a "Your Scheduled News" navigation link for easy access to all scheduled news.
- Added a new moderator permission: "View scheduled news" to allow access to other users' scheduled news.
- Added a new "Publish Scheduled News" cron entry, running every 5 minutes to automatically publish scheduled news. (Note: The cron runs only when site activity triggers it, as XenForo cron jobs do not run independently.)
Improved Search Autocomplete
- Search autocomplete results now utilize the getCoverImage() method to ensure the best available image is displayed consistently. If no image is found, a default thumbnail is used.
Improved News Thumbnails
- Enhanced thumbnail display in compact mode, search results, and tag pages to maintain the correct aspect ratio using custom styling instead of XenForo's avatar classes.
Public Navigation Enhancements
- Renamed "Your News Stories" to "Your News" and changed it to a dropdown menu.
- Renamed the previous "Your News Stories" to "Your Published News", now a sub-navigation link under "Your News".
- Added "Your Scheduled News" as a new sub-navigation link under "Your News".
Fixed various missing phrases.
Fixed missing template causing the error: "Template public:alert_nwp_news_update is unknown".
Fixed missing template causing the error: "Template public:alert_user_news_converted_thread is unknown".
Fixed an issue where moderator action alerts for news were increasing the alert count but not appearing in the user's alert list.
Fixed an issue where creating news without key points would save an empty key point entry.
News Publisher v2.3.6 is now available!
We’re excited to bring you an all-new update with some amazing new features and improvements! With v2.3.6, you can now convert article and discussion threads into news stories with ease, thanks to the new "Thread to News Story Conversion" feature. This feature is fully customizable, allowing you to choose the destination category, tags, and more. It’s perfect for streamlining the process of turning regular discussions into official news posts!
Additionally, the news post editor has received a boost with a full-screen layout, making editing and content creation even easier. We’ve also added a convenient admin option to control the visibility of the search box on the homepage, so you can manage your site's layout exactly how you want.
We’ve made a few tweaks behind the scenes, such as updating the default display order of the "News" tab and adjusting the default number of news posts shown on the index page for fresh installs.
Special thanks to @Lelouch0612 for commissioning the Thread to News Story Conversion Feature.
Read on below for the full version change log and details on all the exciting updates!
1. Convert Thread to News Story - Commissioned by @Lelouch0612
2. Enhanced News Post Editor - Suggested by @PhineasD.
- Introduced a requested feature that allows you to convert article and discussion type threads into news stories!
- Streamlined process accessible via Thread Tools.
- Customizable options during conversion, including destination category, prefix, tags, and news state.
- Automatically links the original thread as the Discussion Tab for the news story.
- Transfers key thread data (attachments, reactions, publish date, views) to the news story while ensuring engagement continuity.
- Fully permission-controlled with the new user group permission "News Publisher: Convert thread to news".
- Requires categories configured with the "Automatically create thread in forum" option enabled.
- Complete documentation is available on our support site to help you get started!
3. New Admin Option: Show Search Box on the Homepage - Suggested by @secnam.
- Enhanced the news post editor with a full-screen layout for better space utilization and an improved editing experience.
- Easily toggle the search box's visibility on the homepage through a simple admin option "Show search box on the homepage".
Updated the default display order of the "News" navigation tab for higher visibility in the navigation menu.
Default number of news displayed for the default category on the index page changed from 6 to 3. This change applies only to fresh installs.
Fixed: Removed the misleading "optional" label from the news editor when publishing news, ensuring clarity in required fields. Reported by @PhineasD.
Fixed: Missing phrase xcu_nwp_news_count in the "Sort by" option for Search Users functionality.
Fixed: Incorrect phrase nwp_comment displayed on search results.