Public Technical Preview 3

To motivate developers and understand the progress we have made, we are returning to the practice of releasing regular Public Technical Previews. The previous Public Technical Preview was released about a year and a half ago and since then we pushed over 800 new commits into the repository.

Please note that Public Technical Preview versions are still not recommended for production use. Use them at your own risk.

What's Changed

A lot. We don't probably need to list every change (because no one remembers or uses PTP2 anyway) but here are some of them:

• There is now VKAPI. It parodies VK's API but not exactly. Sadly, there's no documentation for it yet.
• Users can now switch between classic (wall) and new (microblog) design.
• Instance admins now can confige maximum post size.
• Winter header is shown from December 1st to January 15th.
• We now have simple anti-spam system that is banning users who do too many similar actions in a short period of time.
• Custom nicknames can be assigned for supporters in ticketing system.
• Admins can hide online status and mark deceased users.
• Section for administrators now works somehow.
• Ability to create invite links.
• Registration can be disabled on instance.
• Users can set their date of birth.
• Default profile picture was changed.
• Posts can be pinned.
• Added support for plausible.io, self-hosted web analytics.
• Privacy policy has been added.
• Users can reply to other comments.
• Graffiti can be drawn and attached to posts.
• Videos can be attached to posts.
• Notifications can be shown in real time if Apache Kafka is set up.
• Groups now have configurable administrators list.
• Themes now take effect immediately.
• Groups that are administered can be pinned in the left menu.
• Users can specify their site.
• Posts can be created anonymously.
• Currency "Votes" has been added.
• • Users can give gifts to other users using Votes.
• • Users can transfer Votes.
• Many sections are translated now.
• If OpenVK instance has custom name, it will be shown in the header.
• 2-FA TOTP support has been added.
• Groups now have discussions.
• Now messages can be received not from friends only.
• Groups can now hide their posts in Global feed.
• Added "About instance" page.
• Now timestamps adapt to user's timezone.
• Added E-Mail verification.

Full Changelog: public_preview_2...public_preview_3

Installation

1. Install PHP 7.4, web-server, Composer, Node.js, Yarn and Chandler

• PHP 8 has not yet been tested, so you should not expect it to work.

2. Unpack the OpenVK PTP 3 archive into the /path/to/chandler/extensions/available/openvk directory and install commitcaptcha like this:

git clone https://github.com/openvk/commitcaptcha /path/to/chandler/extensions/available/commitcaptcha

3. And enable them:

ln -s /path/to/chandler/extensions/available/commitcaptcha /path/to/chandler/extensions/enabled/
ln -s /path/to/chandler/extensions/available/openvk /path/to/chandler/extensions/enabled/

4. Import install/init-static-db.sql to same database you installed Chandler to
   4.1. Import all sqls from install/sqls to same database
5. Import install/init-event-db.sql to separate database
6. Copy openvk-example.yml to openvk.yml and change options
7. Run composer install in OpenVK directory
8. Move to Web/static/js and execute yarn install
9. Set openvk as your root app in chandler.yml

Once you are done, you can login as a system administrator on the network itself (no registration required):

• Login: admin@localhost.localdomain6
• Password: admin
  • It is recommended to change the password before using the built-in account.

Full example installation instruction for CentOS 8 is also available here.

Contributors

We want to thank all of our developers and translators: @maksalees, @veselcraft, @dsrev, @celestora, @AlmaArmas, @VladimirLapskiy-zz, @ayaaop, @apeeh, @KosFurler, @samukhin, @Defenders08, @rudzik8, @mbs0ft, @WerySkok, @n1rwana, @themohooks, @windowz414, @hugonote, @MoccoCoffee, @HSDChannel, @SamyoFox, @myslivets, @Diicorp95.