Changes to the site this week:

May 29, 2024:

• NEW: Finished work to maintain calendar events based on ICS files sent to groups (mainly updating and canceling events).
• BUGFIX: Don't send Note To Send Attendees to people who reply maybe to event invites. Re: Tentative/Not Sure responses possible on RSVP events with a limit on attendees
• BUGFIX: Fixed issue with RSVP change notifications sometimes being sent with incorrect DKIM signatures.
• BUGFIX: Fixed some network issues when fetching oembed codes in chat.
• BUGFIX: Uploading to the Photos and Files section in the app was not working.

May 30, 2024:

• NEW: When editing a single event within a repeating event, you are now given the option to update This And All Following Events.

The next #changelog will be published on June 7, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

May 22, 2024:

• BUGFIX: The 'Join Group' button on the logged out group home page did not work for Enterprise groups that had SSO enabled (the Login button did).
• BUGFIX: In some instances, a calendar invite sent to a group was not added to the group's calendar.

May 23, 2024:

• INTERNAL: Refactored the email parsing library to reduce memory usage.

May 24, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Fixed bounce processing logic that would cause some people to not go on Bouncing status when they should.
• INTERNAL: Refactored the email server process to reduce memory usage.

The next #changelog will be published on May 31, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

May 13, 2024:

• BUGFIX: The Top Of Page icon was overlapping the pagination at the bottom of pages. [email protected] | Return to top
• CHANGE: Changed the Cmd-G shortcut on Macs to Ctrl-G. [email protected] | #bug Severe bug on Mac: Find Next/Previous shortcuts overridden by a custom dialog

May 14, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Sticky wiki pages were not truncated correctly on /topics and /messages pages if they had table elements.

May 15, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Menu badges on mobile weren't being cleared properly.
• CHANGE: Removed the website has been updated dialog and instead automatically reload the page. Also fixed the issue of flash notices not appearing after this. Get rid of those pop-up windows to refresh after a server update

May 17, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Fix double reporting issue when reporting files and other objects. "Report" file to moderators - 2 messages
• INTERNAL: Launched a new topic object caching system to support deep pagination as is typically triggered by search engines.

The next #changelog will be published on May 24, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

May 6, 2024:

• BUGFIX: On Firefox, using the Month dropdown in the datepicker would sometimes flash and not work. Date picker
• BUGFIX: Selecting a direct add notice was broken. Notice not showing up in direct add
• BUGFIX: The font size selector in the editor had typos causing it to no work properly. One issue and one unfortunate behavior change with the new editor
• CHANGE: Moderators with billing permission who were not the designated payer would not receive billing notifications including: downgrade notifications, failed payment notifications, and paid invoices. They will receive those notifications going forward.

May 8, 2024:

• BUGFIX: When a Outlook user sent a calendar invite to a group, and then modified that event, a duplicate event was created in the group calendar.

May 9, 2024:

• BUGFIX: In some cases, colors and styles were not kept when pasting into the new editor. [email protected] | #bug FONT COLOR COPY/PASTE, font sizes don't match
• CHANGE: Improved formatting tweaks for the group member and edit subscription pages, along with tweaks to radio buttons and checkboxes.

May 10, 2024:

• CHANGE: Augmented the /topics URLs with additional pagination information to reduce the load on the main database.

The next #changelog will be published on May 17, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

April 27, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Fix pagination after going to a specific message in the expanded messages display. "Next Page" does not work in Ascending Expanded order
• CHANGE: Disabled the new Word HTML filter in the updated editor as it was removing too much style information.

April 28, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Message content within pre tags was not being displayed properly. [email protected] | #bug

April 30, 2024:

• BUGFIX: The chat page would not display correctly on mobile Safari. #bug Chat on iPhone after new enhancements.
• BUGFIX: The sidebar wasn't updating when navigating from a subgroup to the parent group. Possible bug - returning to main group home page

May 1, 2024:

• CHANGE: Swapped the background white color with the base off-white color in light mode to increase the contrast when reading messages.

May 3, 2024:

• NEW: Implemented sitemaps to hopefully improve crawl coverage of the site.

The next #changelog will be published on May 10, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

April 23, 2024:

• BUGFIX: In some instances, when sending a message to a member via /posttosub using the +owner address, the email would actually be sent from the owner's email address. Re: Messages Marked "Send from Group Owner Address" are Sent as Sender

April 24, 2024:

• CHANGE: I've made a change to the bounce algorithm. Previously if we received no additional bounces for 4 days, we cleared the bounce counts for a user. I've added the additional condition that we must have had at least one successful delivery after the last bounce received, before we clear the bounce counts. This is to address the issues of people not bouncing because they are members of groups that have very little traffic.

April 25, 2024:

• CHANGE: Now, when a pending member leaves a group before their membership is approved, the activity log entry will be 'Pending member N left'.
• CHANGE: Rolled out new user interface changes.

April 26, 2024:

• CHANGE: Miscellaneous fixes/updates of the new interface changes.

The next #changelog will be published on May 3, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

April 14, 2024:

• CHANGE: We are now re-writing the From line of all emails sent to Gmail hosted accounts. Gmail is starting to enforce DKIM domain alignment, which is forcing us to do this.

April 15, 2024:

• CHANGE: Remove valid email check when banning an email address. Re: Email address "info@..." is not valid?

April 16, 2024:

• SYSADMIN: Completed the warm up of the new mail servers and they are fully in production.

April 17, 2024:

• CHANGE: Revamped pagination and added canonical tags to hopefully improve Google crawling of public groups. [email protected] | Revamped pagination

April 18, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Remove any spaces within a base64 part of a message before trying to decode it. There shouldn't be any, but some email is arriving with spaces prepended to each line of base64 data.

April 19, 2024:

• CHANGE: Added an alert box announcing the new user interface switchover next week.

The next #changelog will be published on April 26, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

April 1, 2024:

• CHANGE: Email unsubscribe requests must now be properly DKIM signed.
• CHANGE: We now include a 'Resent-From' header whenever we include a 'Resent-Date' header, as required by RFC 5322.

April 2, 2024:

• BUGFIX: The Organizer field was sometimes different for individual events vs the repeat event declaration in an ICS file, which caused parsing errors for some CalDAV servers, and was against the spec.

April 5, 2024:

• NEW: We now handle Outlook/Google Calendar RSVPs for repeating events. A bug yet to be fixed is that this can sometimes generate multiple RSVP notification emails.

I am on vacation until Monday, April 14th. Support responses will be delayed during that time.

The next #changelog will be published on April 19, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

March 25, 2024:

• BUGFIX: We were incorrectly adding a Bounced User log entry when we sent bounce notice messages to bouncing members.

March 27, 2024:

• CHANGE: We no longer send any email to 'typo' domains as well as domains that are hosted by known domain parking servers. [email protected] | Wednesday update

March 29, 2024:

• INTERNAL: Optimized the bounce system.

The next #changelog will be published on April 4, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

March 20, 2024:

• CHANGE: When a bouncing user visits the website, they are now directed to a special page which lets them change their email address or send a bounce probe email. [email protected] | Members who Bounce/Unbounce indefinitely
• CHANGE: We now always send an email notification to a member when they RSVP to an event, regardless of what the RSVP is. Also, events with a max number of attendees now also have ICS files formatted with METHOD=REQUEST so that members can RSVP directly in Outlook and other calendars. Re: Calendar Event and ICS file query

March 21, 2024:

• CHANGE: When a user who is going through the reverification process visits the site, they are now redirected to a special page which lets them change their email address or send a new reverification email. Simply visiting the website no longer automatically reverifies someone.
• CHANGE: The reverification email now includes a link to a new web page, which when visited, reverifies the user. Simply responding to the reverification email will also still reverify the user.

March 22, 2024:

• CHANGE: We now log when a user is set to the red Bounced state, and we now log all instances when a user is set to the blue Bouncing state. [email protected] | Members who Bounce/Unbounce indefinitely

The next #changelog will be published on March 29, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

March 11, 2024:

• CHANGE: Reverted the change where we re-write the Date header of emails. Instead, we now add a Resent-Date header.
• MISC: Began new reverification process for some groups confirmed to have spam trap addresses.

March 12, 2024:

• SYSADMIN: Started sending email through a fourth email server.

March 13, 2024:

• BUGFIX: In some cases we were improperly encoding the 'To' header line for group & sender replies, leading to bounces from GMX associated servers.

March 14, 2024:

• BUGFIX: We weren't saving BCC Me checks properly in drafts. Sending a private reply with "BCC Me" fails if the reply is brought up from Drafts
• SYSADMIN: Upgrade our load balancer instances because they were running out of memory.

March 15, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Include descriptions in #file-notice messages when adding new links.
• SYSADMIN: Started sending email through remaining new servers.

I will be on vacation Monday and Tuesday, March 18-19th. The next #changelog will be published on March 22, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

March 5, 2024:

• CHANGE: Switched DKIM signing to a 2048-bit key, as required by iCloud and others.
• CHANGE: Strip any 'ARC' related headers from incoming group emails.
• BUGFIX: In some instances, when uploading a directory to the Files section, one of the files would be rejected if it was at the top level.
• CHANGE: For group messages, we now change the Date header to be the current date/time when we send the message to members. This is because some mail servers will reject messages with a Date that is too far in the future or past. We do not modify the Date header as it is stored in the archives.

March 6, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Fix permission errors when event organizer tries to modify events.

March 7, 2024:

• BUGFIX: When replying to a message on the website, don't delete the draft until we have successfully sent the message. [email protected] | Unacceptable and illogical operation of "draft" folder and "mod only" topic
• BUGFIX: Don't display the Reply link for messages tagged with a Mods Only Replies tag when viewed by a non-moderator. [email protected] | Unacceptable and illogical operation of "draft" folder and "mod only" topic

March 8, 2024:

• BUGFIX: When a member leaves or is removed from a parent group, causing them to also be removed from any subgroups they are a member of, it was not logged in the activity logs of the subgroups that they had been removed or left.
• BUGFIX: In some instances, it was not possible to edit extra member data fields in a member's group profile page.

The next #changelog will be published on March 15, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

February 26, 2024:

• NEW: New calendar events will default to RSVP being checked.
• NEW: New calendar events will by default populate the Organizer Name and Organizer Email fields with the person creating the event.
• NEW: If the Organizer Email matches a different member, that member also has the ability to edit the event.
• CHANGE: The "By" line when viewing an event has been removed.
• CHANGE: For new single events that request an RSVP and that don't have a maximum number of attendees, I've changed the ICS attachment that's sent to the group so that Outlook and Gmail will now display the Yes/Maybe/No buttons, and will display the Organizer, if there is one.
• CHANGE: Clicking the Yes/Maybe/No buttons in Outlook or Gmail will update your response on the Groups.io website.

February 27, 2024:

• BUGFIX: When editing an existing message with a video attachment, you couldn't check the checkbox to delete the attachment. [email protected] | Problem deleting video attachments
• BUGFIX: Fixed screen reader support for the labels on poll results.

February 28, 2024:

• SYSADMIN: Fixed incomplete SPF DNS records for *.groups.io subdomains.
• INTERNAL: Revamped our DNS publishing system.
• CHANGE: We're now publishing 'DMARC p=none' records for all domains and subdomains that we host. This is to comply with recent Gmail changes.

February 29, 2024:

• SYSADMIN: A bunch of security changes to the production fleet.

The next #changelog will be published on March 8, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

February 19, 2024:

• BUGFIX: The code to export wiki data had accidentally been reverted to a previous version. [email protected] | Wiki export anomaly
• NEW: Wiki group export data now include a page field, which contains the HTML of the current version of the wiki page.
• CHANGE: When viewing RSVPs to an event, also include waitlisted people if there are any. [email protected] | Members not shown waitlisted people on RSVP event

February 20, 2024:

• BUGFIX: In .ics files, for cancelled events, we had 'METHOD: CANCELLED' when it should be 'METHOD: CANCEL'

February 21, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Typo in the group promote page. Promote page typo
• BUGFIX: When sending email, if we received an error during the EHLO command followed by a disconnect from the server, we didn't record the error message received; we instead recorded 'EOF'.

February 22, 2024:

• BUGFIX: In some very rare instances, when trying to display a message on the website, we'd improperly decode a message part, causing an error and the message to not be displayed.
• SYSADMIN: Begin warm-up process for our remaining new email servers; contact various email service providers asking them to allow email from these servers.
• INTERNAL: Improve our email server monitoring systems to make it easier to deal with additional email servers.

The next #changelog will be published on March 1, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

February 12, 2024:

• BUGFIX: A moderator with only the Remove Members permission was not actually able to remove a member from the /member page.

February 14, 2024:

• NEW: Added a new consolidated Chats page under '/chats' and replaced the Hashtags tab in the mobile toolbar with a link to it.

February 16, 2024:

• NEW: When going to a chat that you are subscribed to and you do not have a username set up, we now pop up a dialog box asking you to set a username.

The next #changelog will be published on February 23, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

February 5, 2024:

• NEW: The person who starts a chat now has the ability to delete chat messages (group owners already have that ability).

February 6, 2024:

• NEW: Group moderators and the person that starts a chat can now remove people from a chat, on the /chats page.

February 7, 2024:

• TEST VERSION BUGFIX: Ensure that we remove dangerous HTML from group descriptions in the /groups page. [email protected] | Overview page delivery
• BUGFIX: Don't send out a summary if it's blank. [email protected] | No messages in Beta Group digest
• TEST VERSION BUGFIX: Repeat summaries did not work on the add event page. Repeating event issues
• BUGFIX: Don't send event notifications to groups that have been downgraded to free and that don't have access to the calendar.

February 8, 2024:

• SYSADMIN: Started sending some group emails through new email server mail03.groups.io, and began warming up mail04.groups.io.

February 9, 2024:

• CHANGE: Ensure that all group emails have a proper To header line, meaning we add one if it's missing, and we change it to the group email address if it doesn't already contain a proper email address (ie 'undisclosed recipients').

The next #changelog will be published on February 16, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

January 29, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Prevent subgroups from being renamed to the parent group. Re: Bug in renaming a main or sub group can cause unintended deletion of the whole group

January 31, 2024:

• CHANGE: Added 'Select All' screen reader labels to checkboxes.
• BUGFIX: Clicking the 'Approvals Needed' column in the /groups page no longer disables clicking it a second time.

February 2, 2024:

• BUGFIX: If a member subscribed via email to a subgroup and didn't already have a parent group subscription, the member is automatically subscribed to the parent group. But the notification that they had subscribed to the parent group was sent out indicating that they had subscribed to the subgroup. That meant most mods got two exactly the same notifications.
• BUGFIX: Hopefully fixed an issue where for some people, the unread count badge on the app icon would get 'stuck' and never disappear.

The next #changelog will be published on February 9, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

January 22, 2024:

• NEW: For bouncing/bounced members in the Member page, hovering over the B badge displays the most recent bounce message received. [email protected] | Making bouncing list cleanup easier and faster

January 24, 2024:

• BUGFIX: The column width numbers in database tables were being ignored.

The next #changelog will be published on February 2, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

January 14, 2024:

• ADMIN: Began reverification process for a subset of users to address the issue of email being sent to SpamHaus spam traps.

January 15, 2024:

• BUGFIX: +owner emails were being sent to moderators even if their accounts were bounced or not confirmed.
• BUGFIX: RSVP changed notifications were being sent with an envelope from of the person who initiated the change, when the envelope from should have been [email protected]

January 16, 2024:

• NEW: Added RI and RS badges to the members page to indicate members that are in process of reverifying and those who successfully reverified.

January 17, 2024:

• NEW: In the Members page, the Download button now respects the Filters that have been applied.

January 18, 2024:

• NEW: Added a Reverify FAQ page.
• CHANGE: When viewing a database table, for paragraph columns, we now truncate long cells with a Show More dialog.

January 19, 2024:

• ADMIN: Sent second reverification email.

The next #changelog will be published on January 26, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

January 2, 2024:

• BUGFIX: When replying to sender and BCCing ourselves, we were not re-writing the From line of the BCCed message when we needed to in order to avoid Gmail spoof warnings.

January 8, 2024:

• BUGFIX: We weren't disabling the 'Add Sidebar' button properly in the wiki. Footer and Sidebar button status tweaking
• BUGFIX: The algorithm for generating a Topic summary when editing an existing message was not the same as the algorithm for generating a Topic summary of a new Topic, and generated worse summaries when dealing with some types of messages. Edited Upcoming Events message issues
• BUGFIX: Trim spaces from the beginning and end when updating/setting passwords. We should also trim space chars in /account New Password field

January 9, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Better handle 'EXTERNAL:' subject prefixes. Still getting group replies with Subject of ": Re: [Groupname] old subject"
• CHANGE: For moderator notifications when a mod in another group changes a member's email address or display name, we used to show the moderator's name and email. Instead, we now say 'A moderator in another group'. Privacy violation in account change notification when mod in another group changes member's email address
• BUGFIX: In certain instances, after adding multiple images to a post and then deleting one of the images, it could cause some of the other images to not display correctly. "Add Pictures" not working as expected
• BUGFIX: In the '/pendingmsgs' page, the pending message badge was not refreshing immediately after approving/rejecting pending messages. Pending Message Counter

The next #changelog will be published on January 19, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark