Major upgrade for webtrees (1.4.0), including all new media object handling.

Yesterday (7th March 2013) saw the 22nd upgrade of webtrees. This is numbered 1.4.0 (the previous version was 1.3.2) to signify at least one major part of the system has had major changes.

On this case that part is the media handling code. Everything from the way media objects are uploaded and managed to how they are displayed has been re-written.

There are plenty of other changes too, but few will be obvious on the surface. Many have been targeted at improving the speed of page loading, with some considerable success in many places. The reported summary of changes is:

• Integrating the media firewall into the core code, removing the dependency on .htaccess files.
• Re-factoring the media folders/paths to improve the performance of the media lists, even with 10,000’s of files.
• Replace the lightbox viewer with a modern, lightweight alternative.
• Improve performance by re-factoring access to configuration settings.
• Performance improvements, giving a PageSpeed/YSlow score of ~95%
• Fix over 50 reported bugs.

Over the next 24 hours we will update all kiwitrees client platforms. Once that is completed we will start releasing updates to the full range of simpl-add-ons, closely followed by some new modules, and a new theme. So “watch this space” for developing news!!