Pligg Updates Social Networking CMS With Security Fixes, Improved User Management

Digg popularized the social voting and bookmarking concept in the late 2000s, which brought in democratized curation of news and information. While Digg has arguably declined since its heyday, websites still feature social bookmarking, and many of these use the open-source Pligg CMS. Pligg has recently rolled out version 1.2.0, an update that introduces important security fixes and improved user management, among other features.

Pligg 1.2.0 introduces some code optimization to ensure that Plig-powered sites run faster and with less resource usage. Pligg's new features include better support for code in page content, more flexible voting options and improvements in how users are managed and displayed.

Streamlined Code, Improved Security

The Pligg Subversion logs list dozens of changes, although the most notable changes are as follows:

• Disabled users are now excluded from the Top Users list, which can come in handy when some of the most active users need to be disabled
• Edit user data admin feature fixed
• Modules are given a new weight parameter, which gives modules better control over ordering data based on weight parameters
• Groups can now be searched by group name
• Anti-spam module updated
• New phrase localizations
• Removing a story vote can be assigned a resulting reduction in user score
• PHP can now be used in page content
• Story content area now has automatic closing of open HTML tags
• Site language can be changed by the user from their profile page, which changes the Pligg interface language, but not the content being submitted

Pligg's developers recommend an update, as Pligg 1.2.0 brings in important patches to security holes in older versions.

The Upgrade Process

Upgrading Pligg from older versions to 1.2.0 is fairly straightforward. Updaing from the 1.1.5 release will requires the 1.2.0 files to be written over the existing ones. Then, the /install/upgrade.php script needs to be run to execute the upgrade tasks. Version 1.2.0 also comes with updates to the stock Pligg templates, so those with custom templates are advised to use a comparison tool to see specific changes between the theme files.