Release note / Piwigo 2.9.0

Modernized design, update notification

2.9.0
Download Piwigo 2.9.0

Released on May 2nd, 2017

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Design matters. This is what recent user testing sessions have clearly revealed. This is why this version 2.9 focuses on refreshing our design, for the administration pages. Of course we have also added a few features, improved ergonomy and made your Piwigo even faster. A few weeks after its 15th birthday, Piwigo releases its version 2.9. Happy update!

Modernized design

Here we go with the biggest change on 2.9: design! Dark header, footer and menubar. Less borders. Brand new administration home page, called "Dashboard", with big icons for quick access to main pages.

Piwigo 2.9 comes with a modernized Batch Manager: icons for checkboxes, specific fieldset separator (only on this page, waiting for user feedback), new colors for selected thumbnail (dark gray) and "below the cursor" (Piwigo orange) thumbnails.

Update notification

When a new version is released, your Piwigo will notify you by email.

Tag manager, selection mode

The tag manager now has a distinct selection mode, to apply actions in batch.

Album deletion

When deleting an album containing photos, Piwigo will now ask you what you want to do with photos associated to the album.

Password generator

The user creation form now embeds a password generator. It will create strong and secure passwords, because they're random.

Delete photos by blocks

Deleting thousands of photos at once might not work, so we have implemented a deletion by blocks on orphan photos.

... and we also implemented an equivalent for "any photos", not only orphans!

Duplicates on checksum

In the Batch Manager, find duplicate photos based on checksum (exact match on file content, but file name can differ).

Quick search on albums

Quick search now includes matching albums (as in Piwigo 2.6 and earlier)

A new download link is now available on the edition page of the photo.

Right after album creation, you can edit it with a single click.

Filter ratings by album

In the ratings administration page, you can filter by album.

New display options

On page [Administration > Configuration > Options > Display] you will find new checkboxes, to show or hide the size selector or admin links (edit/caddie/representative). On both thumbnails page and photo page.

Technical features

Speed improvements

First on the administration album list: if you have thousands of albums, you'll immediately see th difference! A small change in algorithm makes a big increase on speed.

The user edition box will open much faster, because Piwigo caches the last visit date, instead of calculating it, which may take a long time if your Piwigo receives many visits.

Improved history engine

The history engine, ie list of pages opened by your visitors, has become faster with new algorithm to summarize visits more often. The history now has maximum size $conf['history_autopurge_keep_lines'] (1 million by default) : older lines will be automatically deleted. Depending on the number of visits you have, it may mean 1 week or 10 years of history.

Sessions automatic purge

On many systems, like Debian, PHP sessions are never purged. Piwigo will do the job, to make sure the sessions table doesn't become huge and slow. See $conf['session_gc_probability'] in your local configuration.

Message box

We already had "infos" (green), "errors" (red), "warnings" (yellow). Let's add the "messages" (blue) box as well. Actually we should have renamed "infos" into "success" and called this new one "infos", but it had too much impact on external code (such as plugins or themes)

Updated libraries

dataTables 1.10 (which is a huge update, in case you rely on it), mDetect 2015.05.13 (no new version since then, quite stable).

API improvements

Integrity checks

When performing a maintenance check on albums, Piwigo will check for integrity: for example, a permission must rely on an existing album (of course, such a case should never happen, but in case it does, the maintenance can repair it)

New album position

By default, when you add a new album, it is placed before any other album at the same level. Now you can decide to place it last, with $conf['newcat_default_position'] = 'last';