Sharetronix Blog:posts

Final tests before the Sharetronix 1.5.1 release

Sofiya Dimitrov — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:51:52 GMT

Hi everyone,

we are in the final phase of the Sharetronix v1.5.1 testing. The Sharetronix DEMO community is now running on v1.5.1. The new version has improved Twitter-compatible API and numerous bug fixes.

Release notes to follow.

RedHerring.com - Sharetronix Evolves

Blogtronix Admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:07:58 GMT

Sharetronix Evolves

on 20 July 2010, 12:44
by Matt Gallagher

Stepping up with the times, Blogtronix released last week an updated version of its microblogging platform, Sharetronix 1.5. The new version features improved social networking capabilities.

New capabilities include APIs for developers with Twitter compatibility; LDAP integration; private groups; public groups; message re-sharing; real-time integration with PubSubHubbub protocol; SSO with Facebook and Twitter; content sharing with Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, and Delicious; Twitter feed aggregation; member invitations from Gmail, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter accounts; theme engine; and mobile UI optimized for smartphones.

The new version can be deployed on Microsoft Windows servers with PHP support and offers Tweetdeck. It includes automatic administrative notifications for updates and upgrades; and has a translation center to currently convert the software in 24 languages.

What makes the software more competitive is its ability to allow customers to download the software onto their servers, while still enjoying the flexible benefits of open source, according to Sofiya Dimitrov, Blogtronix's enterprise project manager. SaaS options are also available. The software is available for free for personal use, though the company charges for commercial use.

“The new improvements and optimizations are part of Sharetronix’s strategy and roadmap,” Dimitrov said. “They address users’ current, latent, and incipient needs – i.e. needs that are already in place and sought after, needs that have not been met by the competitors, and needs that customers have but are not aware that they can solve through microblogging.”

Sharetronix currently powers 10,100 communities in 125 countries.

Problems connecting to TweetDeck with the API

Sofiya Dimitrov — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:25:01 GMT

Some of the users are unable to connect to TweetDeck with the API. It appears that the problem comes from a non-enabled function on the servers - apache_request_headers() You need to have the function enabled in order to use the API to connect to TweetDeck. Here is a simple test method to verify whether the function is enabled on your server or no:

if( !function_exists('apache_request_headers') ) {

echo 'bad';

}else echo 'good';

If the result is "bad" then your server doesn't support apache_request_headers(), if it is "good" you should be able to connect to TweetDeck.

This will be changed in Sharetronix 1.5.1.

Sharetronix 1.5 is here

Blogtronix Admin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:32:13 GMT

RESS RELEASE

July 13, 2010

Blogtronix released today Sharetronix 1.5, an advanced version of its superior enterprise-based open source microblogging software. Sharetronix powers over 10,000 communities in 125 countries. The price for a commercial perpetual license is $499 for unlimited users.

Sharetronix has improved and optimized its core microblogging offerings of social networking; activity feeds; real-time dashboard; multimedia support (text, links, pictures, videos, and other file types such as Zip, PDF etc.); tagging; RSS aggregation; advanced search (for content, user profiles, and groups); and system administration.

The new Sharetronix capabilities include APIs for developers with Twitter compatibility; LDAP integration; private groups; public groups; message resharing; real-time integration with PubSubHubBub protocol; SSO with Facebook and Twitter; content sharing with FB, Twitter, Buzz, and Delicious; Twitter feed aggregation; member invitations from gmail, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter accounts; theme engine; and mobile UI optimized for smartphones.

In addition, Sharetronix 1.5 can be deployed on Microsoft Windows servers with PHP support; offers support for TweetDeck; has automatic administrative notifications for updates and upgrades; and has a translation center that has enabled the community to fully convert the software in 24 languages to date.

Sharetronix 1.5 is available for download under two licenses: a paid and a free version. A Commercial License is intended for business use and the perpetual purchase includes updates and upgrades for one year; after the first year, customers can purchase an annual support agreement in order to receive software updates. A Personal License is allowed for personal (non-business related) use only and it offers community web support.

In the microblogging enterprise space, Sharetronix competes with Yammer, Chatter, Socialtext, and Present.ly although they do not offer the benefits of open source. Further, unlike Yammer and Chatter, which only offers hosted SaaS, Sharetronix allows its customers to download the software behind a firewall and unlike Socialtext, it supports multimedia. StatusNet is another strong competitor in the enterprise open source microblogging market; however, StatusNet does not offer multimedia support like Sharetronix.

Founded in 2005 and based in Berkeley, CA, Blogtronix was one of the first social media companies to offer an enterprise-based social software suite.

Contact information:

Phone: +1 877 256-4876

E-mail: info@blogtronix.com

Some FAQ for Sharetronix 1.5

Sofiya Dimitrov — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 20:41:52 GMT

This blog post is to answer some repeating questions, hope it will be useful:

1. The path of the site has been changed, it is www.sharetronix.com/sharetronix/ , please make sure to update your bookmarks

2. If you have paid for Powered by Blogtronix link removal you don't need to pay again, your initial payment is valid until you either stop using Sharetronix or switch to Commercial license.

3. There is a message in the Administration of the Opensource version that says that you are using either a trial or a free version. If you are using the free version you can remove the message for YOUR Sharetronix instance.

Sharetronix v1.5

Sofiya Dimitrov — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:39:09 GMT

The new Sharetronix v1.5 is out and we hope you do enjoy all the new features (most of which were requested by youJ)

With the new version however comes a new license and I will try to explain why is that needed.

In an open source community people work together to create a good script, however in our case there were many occasions where users have developed add-ons that were never shared back to the community and there were cases where users were reselling the software and some of them were stating that this is their own software. We received inquiries from a couple of companies to confirm that this script is written by us. Not cool people!

In the light of these events we decided to change the license from Affero GPL to our own license which basically allows you to use Sharetronix for FREE if it is for your personal community (which may or may not include Google Ads). Please read full license here

The commercial license is for companies who want to build their internal or external community, also for users who want to resell Sharetronix (you need to contact us for reseller agreement) or want to develop their own plugins to Sharetronix and sell them (agreement here as well).

Also the Powered by Blogtronix link removal fee has changed. Again, we do not want you to remove the link – we want to have your community powered by us J, but if you insist to take it out, please pay the fee here

I am sure you have questions, so please read the license and if it is still unclear – go ahead, email us J

As always, thank you for the continuous support!

Sharetronix integration with TweetDeck - Screenshots

Blogtronix Admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:14:57 GMT

Hello people,

I wanted to post a quick blog about how to integrate Sharetronix with Tweetdeck, I will make a video as well about this, but at least this should help you setup your Sharetronix account with TweetDeck and start testing our new API's.

If you have any questions or problems, please post them in the community or email us.

1. Add a new a new Sharetronix account to your TweetDeck app.

2. Use the Twitter account button and than select Advanced options and add your API URL

3. Click on the Verify Details. Your account should be ready.

4. Add a new column to TweetDeck to display Sharetronix content in your desktop app.

5. Choose your Sharetronix account and setup the content type that you want TweetDeck to start pulling from your Sharetronix community.

6 You are done!

7. You can post from TweetDeck to your Sharetronix community as well, just select the Sharetronix account when you want to post a new update.

How to Create Custom Themes in Sharetronix

Sofiya Dimitrov — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 01:28:07 GMT

Creating Sharetronix themes is as easy as in any other open source platform of this type. To create the theme you need knowledge of HTML and CSS at practical working level, and in order to make a really great graphics site/page you will need to be able to work with graphic editors such as Photoshop.

When you install your Sharetronix version you will find a folder "themes" in your installation folder. It contains the 5 themes that come with Sharetronix by default. From the administrative panel you can choose your site’s default theme. Script itself detects themes but if you want to see a theme in the Admin panel you just need to upload it in its own subfolder within the folder “Themes”.

The easiest way to create your own theme is to open any of the free themes included in the downloaded package. We recommend using the theme Simplicity, which was designed by our team specifically to facilitate the creation of new themes.

When you design your theme, go to Simplicity (or any of the other themes) and check the HTML code embedded variables. Those variables must be integrated into the HTML of your new theme in order for the template engine to replace them with their dynamic values and ultimately to obtain a correct rendering theme for Sharetronix.

Here is a concrete example of how to make sure that whenever a user clicks on the logo he or she will go to the system’s home page, regardless of the URL of your Sharetronix installation.

When you make your theme, the logo above may look like this:

To always have the correct URL, you must replace it with one variable as follows:

< img src = "logo.gif">

When the template engine processes this code it will replace the SITE_URL?> with the URL of your installation. This is how theme templates usually work.

When you create your own theme there is something important that you should not overlook. In the theme folder you have to put a file named theme.gif, which is a screenshot (logo) of the theme. This file will be visible in the Sharetronix admin panel when you go to the option to change the theme.

Furthermore the thumbnail of the theme in the folder should be a file named theme.php, which contains some important parameters that describe the topic. If you develop your theme based on Simplicity you can simply change the same file by filling in details for the new theme and for you as its author.

If you have difficulties setting up a new theme, you can always ask questions in the Sharetornix community at address: http://sharetronix.com/opensource/demo/

Check out the new Sharetronix 1.5

Sofiya Dimitrov — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:28:56 GMT

You can test the new Sharetronix 1.5 in the Demo & Community

Please note that it is still a BETA and there could be some issues. Also some of the functionalities are not finished, hence missing in this build.

Don't forget to test the Twitter API:

Happy testing :)

New features in the upcoming Sharetronix version

Sofiya Dimitrov — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:32:16 GMT

We thought we would share with you some of the new features in the upcoming Sharetronix version :)

These include:

* Twitter API

* LDAP

* Re-share (think Re-tweet)

* Improved Dashboard and User profiles

* Twitter feed import

* Activities grouping

* Search in comments

* PubSubHubbub integration

* Option in Admin section to be notified for a new Sharetronix version

* etc...

What do you think, what else do we need to include?

Survey

Sofiya Dimitrov — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:22:32 GMT

Hi everyone,

We need your opinion on how to improve Sharetronix. Please fill out the short survey that we have prepared :

http://sharetronix.com/opensource/survey

Thank you in advance :)

Remove Powered by Blogtronix backlink

Sofiya Dimitrov — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:59:48 GMT

Hi everyone,
There were many requests to allow you to remove the Powered by Blogtronix backlink for a fee. Now this is finally possible. You can pay $39 USD and remove the logo from the footer of your Sharetronix-based web site. To do so you need to go to http://sharetronix.com/sharetronix/linkremoval and use PayPal. Please remember that a single $39 USD payment allows you to remove the backlink from one Sharetronix installation and is valid for all future Sharetronix versions.
Sharetronix license http://sharetronix.com/sharetronix/license
thanks,
Sofiya

p.s. Price and links updated in this post as of July 15th

Sharetronix Microblog Open-source - 5 Minute Installation Guide

Blogtronix Admin — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:05:11 GMT

Thanks to RandyMac for this great video tutorial.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MemberTipz#p/f

Important information for the latest Sharetronix 1.4.2 version

Sofiya Dimitrov — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:35:44 GMT

We have just released the latest Sharetronix version and it comes with a new license, please read carefully the new terms in the license.txt file.

Changed text in the license:

Sharetronix Opensource is licensed under the GNU Affero General

Public License, version 3 (the "AGPLv3") and, pursuant to Section 7(b)

of the AGPlv3, is subject to the following additional terms:

Licensee is hereby required to display the author attribution

"Powered by Blogtronix" on all user interface webpages of the on-line

community website including the webpages containing legal notices and

terms and conditions. Licensee is further required to retain the

author attribution "Powered by Blogtronix” within the source code of

the Sharetronix Opensource 1.4.2 and later versions."

Also, we would like to thank to members of our Sharetronix community - MarcosBL and alien

Sharetronix Optimization Tips

Nikola Pavlov — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:07:23 GMT

Here are some tips for improving Sharetronix performance and speed.

1. Upgrade your Sharetronix version regularly.

Our team is working hard every day to improve Sharetronix and we strongly recommend to upgrade your installation regularly. Since version 1.4.1 you are able to upgrade it without overwriting everything and running the install script - there is a list of changed files which you can overwrite manually. Get the latest Sharetronix version from here: http://sharetronix.com/opensource/download

2. Set fast caching mechanism

Sharetronix stores a lot of data into a cache for faster access. This cache can be stored on the filesystem or in the database, but it's highly recommended to store it into the server's operating memory (RAM). This can be done in two ways, but you will need a root access to the server. The first way is the Memcached caching system which can be implemented in PHP with the Memcache or Memcached extensions. The second way is the APC (Alternative PHP cache) extension. If you install one of them, you should set the variable $C->CACHE_MECHANISM in the Sharetronix configuration file - ./system/conf_main.php.

3. Install eAccelerator on your server

eAccelerator is a free open-source PHP accelerator & optimizer. It increases the performance of PHP scripts by caching them in their compiled state, so that the overhead of compiling is almost completely eliminated. It also optimizes scripts to speed up their execution. eAccelerator typically reduces server load and increases the speed of your PHP code by 1-10 times. You can find more information here: http://eaccelerator.net

4. Set a cronjob for Sharetronix on your server

Sharetronix needs some scripts to be ran in background periodically. This can be done very well with Cronjobs, but the problem is that most of the hosting providers don't support cronjobs. So Sharetronix uses very ugly alternative which can cause slow page load sometimes. If your server supports cronjobs, you can fix this by setting the following cronjob to run every minute with the linux crontab command:
* * * * * /path/to/your/cli/php /path/to/your/sharetronix/system/cronjobs/worker.php

5. Use ImageMagick for image processing

By default Sharetronix uses PHP's GD extension for processing images, which is not good enough. If there is ImageMagick installed on your server (or you have root access and can install it), it's recommended to use its command line tools for image processing. In the Sharetronix configuration file (./system/conf_main.php) you need to set the variable $C->IMAGE_MANIPULATION to "imagemagick_cli" and the variable $C->IM_CONVERT to the path to the Convert program (usully /usr/bin/convert).

6. Set the RPC servers which Sharetronix pings on each new post

By default on each new post Sharetronix pings the rpc.pingomatic.com RPC server so the post can be indexed faster by Google and other search engines. You can specify more than one RPC servers, but it can cause delays. Important: if your Sharetronix installation is behind-the-firewall (not public) or you just don't want to ping these servers, disable this functionality in ./system/conf_main.php - set $C->RPC_PINGS_ON to FALSE.