Serendipity Styx Edition

Serendipity Styx 5.1.0 release

2026-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2026/02 - The new Serendipity Styx 5.1.0 Stable release

Requirements: At least PHP 8.2 !!

Better use PHP 8.4 !! And we are fully ready and prepared for PHP 8.5 😀 !! Latest PHP 8.5.6 release runs overall fine.

5.1.0 - The final release of new Serendipity Styx 5.1

Read the ChangeLog, please.

Styx 5.1.0

Massively improved the MediaLibrary adding Imagick extension module support
Improve image upload sizes
Improve orientation issues with smartphone shot cameras
Fix libraries for PHP 8.4/8.5 deprecation removals
Fix some issues for PDO::PostgreSQL
Remove PEAR XML and pingback services
Update to jQuery v4.0.0 final
Finally finishes the language UTF-8 only migration which now removes all remaining and existing directories/files as announced several times
Improved [ pure ] theme styles
and many more 😎 fixes and features…

Happy Upgrade ! 😃

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 5.1-rc1 release

2026-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2026/01 - The new Serendipity Styx 5.1-rc1 Release Candidate of new release

Requirements: At least PHP 8.2 !!

Better PHP 8.4 !! And we are fully ready and prepared for PHP 8.5 😀 !! Latest PHP 8.5.5 release runs overall fine.

5.1-rc1 - A Release-Test-Candidate of new Serendipity Styx 5.1 heading to final release

THANK YOU for helping us to finish and finalize this new Serendipity Styx 5.1 version ! Read the ChangeLog, please.

Styx 5.1

Massively improved the MediaLibrary adding Imagick extension module support
Improve image upload sizes
Improve orientation issues with smartphone shot cameras
Fix libraries for PHP 8.4/8.5 deprecation removals
Fix some issues for PDO::PostgreSQL
Remove PEAR XML and pingback services
Update to jQuery v4.0.0 final
Finally finishes the language UTF-8 only migration which now removes all remaining and existing directories/files as announced several times
Improved [ pure ] theme styles
and more …

It is expected that we will get some exception or hidden logged errors with non-deeply checked plugins that are not so much mainstream. If you run into these please file a core issue or plugin issue over at GitHub or mention them in the discussions. Just paste the error exception with the stack trace and explain what you did to get there, so it is easy to reproduce. Normally you can just resume with your work afterwards by going back in your browsers history or by returning to the start page of your Backend or Frontend.

Thanks again; See you soon on next 😎 Serendipity Styx 5.1.0 revisions !😃

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 5.0.4 bugfix release

2025-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2025/07 - The new Serendipity Styx 5.0.4 bugfix revision of new major release

Requirements: At least PHP 8.2 !!

Better use a stable PHP 8.4 !!

5.0.4 - A late 2cd 🎅 Nikolaus bugfix release of new Serendipity Styx 5.0.0 ++

THANK YOU for support and help ! Read the ChangeLog, please.

Styx 5.0.4 since 5.0.3

Fixed bootstrap 4 themes not being able to work with brand new jquery v4
Improve some more variable checks
Fixed some themes
Ready for brand new PHP 8.5

For the real major NEWS updates regarding Styx 5.0, please read below release candidate and beta Announcements.

Having ironed-out lots of these issue, it is still expected that we will get some exception errors with non-deeply checked plugins that are not so much mainstream. If you run into these please file a core issue or plugin issue over at GitHub or mention them in the discussions. Just paste the error exception with the stack trace and explain what you did to get there, so it is easy to reproduce. Normally you can just resume with your work afterwards by going back in your browsers history or by returning to the start page of your Backend or Frontend.

Thanks again; See you soon on next 😎 Serendipity Styx 5.1 revision !😃

The next version will be Styx 5.1.0, which will finally clean up old UTF-8 language file directories, apart from exiting new improvements. Please update your local or development plugins and themes until then! This is announced in the upgrade tasks to 5.0.0.

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 5.0.3 bugfix release

2025-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2025/06 - The new Serendipity Styx 5.0.3 bugfix revision of new major release

Requirements: At least PHP 8.2 !!

Better use a stable PHP 8.4 !!

5.0.3 - A 🎅 Nikolaus 🎅 Bugfix release of new Serendipity Styx 5.0.0 ++

THANK YOU for support and help ! Read the ChangeLog, please.

Styx 5.0.3 since 5.0.2

Fixed the adding category issue
Improve some more variable checks
Fixed some ImageMagick image tool issues
Fixed several plugin issues with spamblock and nl2br
Fixed several silently logged fail errors
Ready for brand new PHP 8.5

For the real major NEWS updates regarding Styx 5.0, please read below release candidate and beta Announcements.

Thanks again; See you soon on next 😎 Serendipity Styx 5.1 revision !😃

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 5.0.0 ++ release

2025-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2025/05 - The new Serendipity Styx 5.0.0 final revision of new major release

Requirements: At least PHP 8.2 !!

Better use a stable PHP 8.4 !!

5.0.0 - The final release of new Serendipity Styx 5.0.0 ++

THANK YOU for support and help ! Read the ChangeLog, please.

Styx 5.0.0 since RC2

Fix some more comment handling issues
Improve some variable checks
Fixed a postgreSQL type issue
Improved [ pure ] theme styles
Ready for brand new PHP 8.5
and more …

Styx 5.0.1 and 5.0.2

Fixed some issues with new plugins syncs and null values which only occurred on live systems causing fatal error halts

For the real major NEWS updates regarding Styx 5.0, please read below release candidate and beta Announcements.

It is expected that we will get some exception errors with non-deeply checked plugins that are not so much mainstream. If you run into these please file a core issue or plugin issue over at GitHub or mention them in the discussions. Just paste the error exception with the stack trace and explain what you did to get there, so it is easy to reproduce. Normally you can just resume with your work afterwards by going back in your browsers history or by returning to the start page of your Backend or Frontend.

Thanks again; See you soon on next 😎 Serendipity Styx 5.x revisions !😃

One last word: If there isn’t a necessary .3 bugfix release required, the next version will be Styx 5.1.0, which will finally clean up old UTF-8 language file directories. Please update your local or development plugins and themes until then! This is announced in the upgrade tasks to 5.0.0.

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 5.0-rc2 release

2025-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2025/04 - The new Serendipity Styx 5.0-rc2 of new major release

Requirements: At least PHP 8.2 !!

Better use PHP 8.4 !! And it looks like we are already prepared for upcoming PHP 8.5 😀 !! Latest PHP 8.5 RC builds run fine.

5.0-rc2 - A Release-Test-Candidate of new Serendipity Styx 5.0 heading to final release

THANK YOU for helping us to finish and finalize this new Serendipity Styx 5.0 major version ! Read the ChangeLog, please.

Styx 5.0-rc2

Fix some more comment handling type issues
Fix libraries for type issues and PHP 8.5 deprecations
The RichText Editor auto focus behavior was refactored to not auto focus itself since this brought too many problems in the frontend and as well in some backend places
Bug fixes
Fixed several PHP 8.5 deprecation issues
Improved styles (read the changelog if using copy or child themes, please)
and more …

Thanks again; See you soon on next 😎 Serendipity Styx 5.0 revisions !😃

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 5.0-rc1 release

2025-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2025/03 - The new Serendipity Styx 5.0-rc1 of new major release

Requirements: At least PHP 8.2 !!

Better PHP 8.4 !! And it looks like we are already prepared for upcoming PHP 8.5 😀 !! Latest PHP 8.5 Beta2 runs fine.

5.0-rc1 - A Release-Test-Candidate of new Serendipity Styx 5.0 heading to final release

THANK YOU for helping us to finish and finalize this new Serendipity Styx 5.0 major version ! Read the ChangeLog, please.

Styx 5.0-rc1

Finally all additional_plugins have raised up for Serendipity Styx 5.0. Styx 5.0 now checks all plugins root directory for UTF-8 encoded lang files only.
Fix some lasting comment handling type issues
Fix libraries for type issues and PHP 8.4/8.5 deprecations
Fix some API parameter and return type issues for PDO::PostgreSQL.
Update to jQuery v4.0.0-rc.1 which removed a bunch of methods we need to check for - and which looks promising
Finally removed the plug plugin old s9y image logo
Improved styles
and more …

Thanks again; See you on next 😎 Serendipity Styx 5.0 revisions !😃

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 5.0-beta2 release

2025-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2025/02 - The new Serendipity Styx 5.0-beta2 of new major release

Requirements: At least PHP 8.2 !!

Better PHP 8.4 !! And it looks like we are already prepared for upcoming PHP 8.5 😀 !!

5.0-beta2 - A Beta-Test release of new Serendipity Styx 5.0

THANK YOU for helping us to finish and finalize this new Serendipity Styx 5.0 major version ! Read the ChangeLog, please.

Styx 5.0-beta2

Fix edge case types for some radio buttons, serendipity_track_url, serendipity_sendComment, traverse_plugin_dir, get_event_plugins and serendipity_setCookie
Avoid placing empty category names in Frontend sidebar lists
Fix Extended descriptions for XML (RSS) icons in some sidebar plugins
Fix broken [ko] USE_CACHE_DESC constant, and silence serendipity_MB_LOADED define warnings
Fix an old BUG with MYSQLi PORT settings
Fix case sensitive directory name issue for case-sensitive filesystems in TinyMCE plugins
Remove outdated feedburner and subToMe syndication references
and more …

It is expected that we will get some exception errors with non-yet converted plugins that are not so much mainstream. If you run into these please file a core issue or plugin issue over at GitHub or mention them in the discussions. Just paste the error exception with the stack trace and explain what you did to get there, so it is easy to reproduce. Normally you can just resume with your work afterwards by going back in your browsers history or by returning to the start page of your Backend or Frontend.

Thanks again; See you on next 😎 Serendipity Styx 5.0 revisions !😃

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 5.0-beta1 release

2025-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2025/01 - The new Serendipity Styx 5.0-beta1 major release

Requirements: At least PHP 8.2 !!

5.0-beta1 - A Beta-Test release of new Serendipity Styx 5.0

After a long run the development of upcoming Styx 5.0 came to a public state and is now waiting for your tests, my fellow bloggers !

THANK YOU for helping us to finish and finalize this new Serendipity Styx 5.0 major version ! Read the ChangeLog, please.

Styx 5.0

Refactored the language system to UTF-8 only
Refactored the RichText Editor from CKEditor to TinyMCE
Use of strict types for the API
Multiple fixes and improvements
Modernize structures for modernized Browsers
Cache improvements
and so much more (…to be completed)

Thanks again; See you on next 😎 Serendipity Styx 5.0 revisions !😃

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.5.1 release

2024-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2024/05 - The Serendipity Styx 4.5.1 release

4.5.1 - A small bugfix release

It is supposed to be the latest must have revision to positively checkout into the future of Serendipity Styx ! Read the ChangeLog, please.

Styx 4.5.1 fixed

The broken htmlcomment option for the public since 4.5.0 release
Allowed CKEditor ref tags for the wikilinks plugin
Changed the image media props default value in the copyright property to realname

Have fun with the update and read the ChangeLog!! See you again on next 😎 Serendipity Styx 5.0 !😃

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.5.0 release

2024-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2024/04 - The Serendipity Styx 4.5.0 release

4.5.0 - Pre Winter Edition and maintenance release

Since Styx 4.4.2 release the development of Styx 5 started and on its way some relevant issues and improvements were found to now file a new Styx 4 revision.

In some weeks we will also see the release of the new PHP 8.4 version. Styx 4.5 is ready for it and you better update your system to current Styx 4.5 before getting on this train. Please update to the latest available PHP version for your system, to be able to work with all features Serendipity Styx supports.

It is supposed to be the latest must have revision to positively checkout into the future of Serendipity Styx ! Read the ChangeLog, please.

Styx 4.5.0 worked on

Fixed varying type warning error with postgreSQL databases
Fixed several bundled-libs/ library deprecation message errors for upcoming PHP 8.4
Fixed some real Methusalem and other old bugs
Improved triggered error reportings for PHP 8.4 deprecation sets
Update highlightJS and Magnific Popup javascript assets
Refactored the ATOM feed for dark mode and feed stylesheet
Multi-changed [ default, default-php, b46, b53, b5blog, boot, bootstrap4, clean-blog, psg, pure, next, skeleton, sliver, 2k11, timeline ] themes for several issues or improvements
Improved the image orphans tasker and the syndication feed
Added backend comments code highlight ability
General bug fixing and consistency changes
Improved some styling issues and for some external plugin edge cases
Multi-fixes for type cared precision
Improved some description and explanation constants in language files
Backported some Smarty security changes from upcoming Styx 5
[Authenticated Users] Allow RichText Editor comments only as an extension of general usage
Improved searchTerm filter preparations and the Serendipity sendMail standard compliance
Fixed some media IPTC meta field data values and better catch networking connect return errors
Improved installer messaging when using the tar installer file for owner:group mismatch

Have fun with the update and read the ChangeLog!! See you again on next 😎 Serendipity Styx 5.0 !😃

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.4.2 release

2024-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2024/03 - The Serendipity Styx 4.4.2 release

4.4.2 - A Point Update Edition

Another bugfix release, caused by several issues and with PHP 8 versions.

Styx 4.4.2 fixes

Fixed several type warning errors with postgreSQL databases
Fixed several Smarty compilation errors
Fixed several errors with non production version cases
Fixed plugin configuration data POST checkups for type cared precision
Improved new plugin tasker and comment messaging
Other styling minors

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.4.1 release

2024-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2024/02 - The Serendipity Styx 4.4.1 release

4.4.1 - A Point Update Edition

A quick bugfix release, caused by PHP < 8.3 which could throw a fatal error “white page” on upgrade.

Styx 4.4.1 fixes

Fixed a fatal error in 4.4.0 media nuke handler improvement for first “.v/” image variations subdir
Other styling minors

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.4.0 release

2024-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2024/01 - The Serendipity Styx 4.4.0 release

4.4.0 - Spring Edition and maintenance release

Since Styx 4.3 releases some major issues and improvements were found to file a new revision. Next Serendipity Styx 5.0 was set on hold meanwhile to use the new 4.4 revision as its new base for jump off.

So again to say: This maintenance update is the last regular Serendipity Styx 4 series revision supporting the PHP 7.4+ Series. If nothing in the following development of next major Serendipity Styx version 5.0 is discovered, which needs an important backport refactoring, further only urgent bugfix or security point releases will be given.

As already pointed out: With the release of PHP 8.3 the EOL for PHP 8.0 has arrived. Please update to the latest available PHP version for your system, to be able to work with all features Serendipity Styx supports.

It is supposed to be a must have revision to positively checkout into the future of Serendipity Styx ! Read the changelog, please.

Styx 4.4.0 introduces

Fixed remote_ticker issues for PostGreSQL databases queries and trying to fix a re-appearing of hidden remote messages on some host
Generally improved markup, templates, styles, plugins and constants
Improve output indentation markup mainly based to the [ pure ] standard theme in 2-sidebar structures indent mode. This helps to better understand the general inheritance tree, find issues more easily and always send clean code.
Fix the history plugins specialage years option for leap year calculations
Improved [ styx ] backend theme dark mode conditioning to match browser preferences OR previously added storage sets, backend user preferences and (non-) login states for asset loads, icon-schemes, virgin arrivals, Smarty vars and scope. NO JS, NO FUN ! ;-)
Improved [ styx ] backend theme to implement expandable hooked plugins into the backend sidebar, to expand/collapse non-core plugins on demand
Improved [ styx ] backend theme installation and upgrade pages
Refactor several main functions for performance and others optimizations like media nuke handlers
Added dark mode support to the [ styx ] backend theme for installer.inc and upgrader.inc template files, which also removes unneeded assets loading.
Allow [ pure, boot, b5blog, b53 ] themes dark mode preference in backend preview_iframe views.
Fixes to the [ pure, psg, dude, boot, b5blog, b46, b53 ] themes
Upgrade some libraries and assets
Bug fixes

Have fun with the update and read the ChangeLog!! See you again on 😎 Serendipity Styx 5.0 !😃

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.3.2 release

2023-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2023/10 - The Serendipity Styx 4.3.2 release

4.3.2 - Another Point Update Edition

A next follow bugfix release.

Styx 4.3.2 addresses

Fixed remote_ticker issues for SQLite and PostGreSQL databases queries
Fixes for (imported) hotlink images and Variations
Improved markup, templates, styles, plugins and constants

Please update !! And - See you on next 😎 Serendipity Styx 5.0 - hopefully - !😃

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.3.1 release

2023-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2023/09 - The Serendipity Styx 4.3.1 release

4.3.1 - A Point Update Edition

A quick bugfix release.

Styx 4.3.1 houses

Fixed several remote_ticker issues which needed a slight refactoring
Other minors

Please update !! And - See you on next 😎 Serendipity Styx 5.0 - hopefully - !😃

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.3.0 release

2023-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2023/08 - The Serendipity Styx 4.3.0 release

4.3.0 - The Autumn Update Edition

This maintenance update is the last regular Serendipity Styx 4 series revision supporting the PHP 7.4+ Series. If nothing in the following development of next major Serendipity Styx version 5.0 is discovered, which needs an important backport refactoring, further only urgent bugfix or security point releases will be given.

As already pointed out: With the release of PHP 8.3 the EOL for PHP 8.0 has arrived. Please update to latest available PHP version for your system, to be able to work with all features Serendipity Styx supports.

Some important refactoring and future update changes have been made. So this is not only a pretty good maintenance upgrade, it is supposed to be a must have revision to positively checkout into the future of Serendipity Styx ! Read the changelog, please.

Styx 4.3.0 spices

Ready for the new PHP 8.3 version
Refactor comment escaping, fixing a regression with valid code snippets on re-edit cases
Improve some icons, helper constants and documentary links
Improve the backend startpage overview plugin API for plugin hooked “section” placement, so it better works as a normal dashboard widget
Upgrade some template and core assets, eg. jQuery lib, Smarty, etc.
Retired plugin “serendipity_event_smartymarkup” due to Smarty changes
Improve the [ pure ] standard theme by adding “back-to-top” anchor jumpers
At long last, allow other core themes to follow an elder [ core / pure ] improvement, to exclude empty (blog) years in the archives (list)s
Refactor and fix the plugin zombies comparison checkup maintenance task
Improve the MediaLibrary workflow for better RichText editor placement
Add logic to check an automatic upgrade GO for the next Styx major 5 series
Prepare Spartacus to check and run “additional_plugins” updates over the new “legacy” named Github branch, until next major Styx 5.0 revision has settled
Added a remote ticker notification system for urgent update and future preparation notifications
Certain bug fixes for several core tasks
Improved the backend markup indents for the main content where possible

Take it !! And - See you on next 😎 Serendipity Styx 5.0 - hopefully - !😃

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Watch your PHP version

2023-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2023/07 - Watch your PHP version

End of Life for PHP 8.0

Please notice: PHP current Version series are not that long supported any more like they were with elder PHP series, i.e. PHP 5. See this official Support Until announcement page. Even for PHP 8.0 EOL time will end in 3 weeks:

Active support	A release that is being actively supported. Reported bugs and security issues are fixed and regular point releases are made.
Security fixes only	A release that is supported for critical security issues only. Releases are only made on an as-needed basis.
End of life	A release that is no longer supported. Users of this release should upgrade as soon as possible, as they may be exposed to unpatched security vulnerabilities.

So better hurry up. The new upcoming Styx 4.3 is your last chance series to work and live with your current PHP versions, but we do recommend to use the latest 8.2 revision! 😉 After Styx 4.3 the work on the new Styx 5 (major) series starts, which will require a minimum of PHP 8.2.

See you soon on this channel!

Serendipity Styx 4.2.0 release

2023-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2023/06 - The Serendipity Styx 4.2.0 release

4.2.0 - A Maintenance Release

Serendipity Styx 4.x.x revisions will be the last update Series supporting the PHP 7.4 Series and will further on only see some maintenance or bugfix releases. The previously announced change to PHP 8 minimum requirement was stashed and we now start developing Serendipity Styx 5.0 up from PHP 8.2 as the minimum. Styx 4.2 has ironed out several bugs and other inconsistencies and is pretty much another good maintenance release, pushing a new 😎 Styx Logo. Read the ChangeLog.

Styx 4.2.0 faces

Add the new Styx Logo. “Gone fishing… Phishing for inspiration…”
Improve header sets up from HTTP/1.1, including some LiteSpeed server cache exceptions
Several Theme templates were updated for some issues
Fix and improve the “last page of” multipage search results on MySQL
Improve the MediaLibrary messaging for ImageMagick
Improve several references with plugin categories
Upgrade some template and core assets
Improve the new [ b53 ] Work-In-Progress [ WIP ] theme for final assets and new configurable color themes
Fix .htaccess core templates for Apache 2.3 deny syntax. This also is the minimum Apache Server version supported.
Bug fixes

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.1.3 release

2023-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2023/05 - The Serendipity Styx 4.1.3 release

4.1.3 - A Bugfix Release

After the Serendipity Styx 4.1.2 bugfix release we found it related to PHP 8.2 version on certain servers too.

Styx 4.1.3 fixed

A follow-up regression found for PHP 8.2 versions
Fix entries search result on bool (no result) for PHP 8.2
Improve [ b53 ] theme
Other minors

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.1.2 release

2023-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2023/04 - The Serendipity Styx 4.1.2 release

4.1.2 - A quick Bugfix Release

Quickly after Serendipity Styx 4.1.1 bugfix release we found it related to PHP 8.1 version too.

Styx 4.1.2 fixed

A follow-up regression found for PHP 8.1.x versions

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.1.1 release

2023-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2023/03 - The Serendipity Styx 4.1.1 release

4.1.1 - A quick Bugfix Release

Quickly after Serendipity Styx 4.1.0 release yesterday an odd type issue was found, resulting in a blank page.

Styx 4.1.1 fixed

An incorrect integer value: ‘’ MYSQLI_SQL_EXCEPTION for PHP versions 7.4 and 8.0 setting config vars (i.e. changing templates)

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.1.0 release

2023-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2023/02 - The Serendipity Styx 4.1.0 release

4.1.0 - A Maintenance Spring Edition - For M.

Serendipity Styx 4.1 revision will be the last update supporting the PHP 7.4 Series. Some more and really 😎 improvements were made again! Styx 4.1 has ironed out several bugs and other inconsistencies and is pretty much a good maintenance release, with an Easter-Egg.

Styx 4.1.0 faces

Improves the handling with some NEW (edge-cased) configuration options
Added NEW MediaLibrary selection fields
Improves language descriptions of several options or buttons
Some resolved fixes and found oddities related to MYSQLi multi-byte search or unsupported OPENSSL_VERSION session-based authentication timer
Improves the [ pure ] theme for additional search result head titles by comments and staticpages
Removes the limitation of GIF image(s) to Variation(s) converts
Improves the MediaLibrary to follow given paging for per item Variation delete or re-/build actions
Improves the entryproperties plugin by added NEW configuration option, to automatize the cache-entries confirmation dialog for the next pages after the 1st confirm
Upgrade some template and core assets
Added the new [ b53 ] Work-In-Progress [ WIP ] theme for long awaited and promising bootstrap 5.3-alpha3 assets

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Happy Birthday Miss S

2023-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2023/1 - 20 years of Serendipity

🎂 Still living… and better than ever ❗

Its time to give an update of development and the future plans for Serendipity.

Upcoming Serendipity Styx 4.1 revision will be the last update supporting the PHP 7.4 Series, while next 4.2 will require PHP 8. Needless to say, recommended to use is the latest PHP 8.2 revision which allows to use all features Serendipity Styx already supports. Styx 4.1 has ironed out some bugs and other inconsistencies and is pretty much a maintenance release, but also improves the handling with some new configuration options, MediaLibrary selection fields and better language descriptions.

Serendipity Styx will have to check for a new Rich Text Editor (WYSIWYG), since the current CKEditor 4 Series has an end-of-life scheduled for 2023. The excellent new CKE 5 Series is something totally different and would require a total rebuild and split for current textarea usage on Serendipity side, which seems to be a no go. Other "CMS" out there do face the same issue and probably the most are going to change to TinyMCE.

Further plans for Serendipity Styx will see a refactoring of the current language system to UTF-8 only and maybe even move away from current constant only usage. Time will tell.

Now, lets have a deep look in the miraculous mirror of futures…

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe …

👉 Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. 🧞

Serendipity Styx 4.0.1 release

2022-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2022/10 - The Serendipity Styx 4.0.1 release

4.0.1 - Minor End Year release

Move on into 2023! HAPPY NEW YEAR 🎆 to you all!

Styx 4.0.1 comes with

Improved permalinks pattern
Improve P-Word search request colliding with P-Page uriArguments for routing
Improve spamblock maintenance cleanspam reasons for type REJECTED
Update templates asset jQuery lib to v.3.6.3
Fix some warnings, continued removal of MSIE conditions and other minors

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.0.0 release

2022-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2022/09 - The Serendipity Styx 4.0.0 release

4.0.0 - New Major Version

Finally the new major 4.0.0 release has rounded. Thanks for any help with our last public pre releases. Some more and really 😎 improvements were made again! So today - with the new public release of shiny new PHP 8.2 - we shift this fully compatible Serendipity version.

Styx 4.0.0 finalizes with

Improved plugin html nugget areas for markupeditor/type assignments
Some resolved fixes and found oddities related to configurations or plugins
Improved the [ pure ] theme comments area in special for the dark theme mode and the used font
Upgrade some template and core assets
Please read all other 4.0… blog post announcements for more

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.0-rc1 release

2022-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2022/08 - The Serendipity Styx 4.0-rc1 release

4.0-rc1 - Public Release Candidate 1

Thanks for the help with our last Beta2. More 😎 improvements were made! Please help for making this upcoming 4.0 release a very smooth release.

Styx 4.0-rc1 contains

Finished the comments escape refactoring. From now on a mix of switched markup editors should not matter anymore for elder blogs.
NEW: Deny mixing of PLAIN TEXT editor default buttons in the entry forms when used with markup editors like markdown or textile plugins. A workaround variable for the old behaviour is supported. Read the news (changelog) file. This new (more strict) behaviour clarifies what you actually have and (want to) use.
This and that to both relations for consistencies and other minor improvements.

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.0-beta2 release

2022-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2022/07 - The Serendipity Styx 4.0-beta2 release

4.0-beta2 - Public Beta 2

Thanks for the help with our last Beta1. Great improvements were made! 😎 Please help for making this upcoming 4.0 release a very smooth release.

Styx 4.0-beta2 contains

Fixed a hell bunch of outdated PostgreSQL and general PDO-driver database connection OR mis-behaving SQL query part issues
Fixed several buggy issues with the spamblock plugin, related to trackbacks, filter verification for htmlcomments and the log file
Added theme improvements for with the updated commentsearch plugin to act separately on search results
Fixed some regressions in [ s9ymarkup, emoticate ] plugins for the escape refactoring
Removed some very old and deprecated set variables
Improved and added some messaging on core tasks

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 4.0-beta1 release

2022-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2022/06 - The Serendipity Styx 4.0-beta1 release

4.0-beta1 - Public Beta 1

Due to the new major version jump, this version requires a short beta release cycle. I am happy when you help getting this to be a smooth release.

Styx 4.0-beta1 contains

Minimum requirement is now set to PHP 7.4 (and it will not last long until PHP 8 only is required for futures, roundabout next summer)
Added a new function to convert strftime() date formats to the dateTime Interface successor up from PHP 8.2. This PHP version requires the intl/icu extension loaded
Generate strong random & secure password suggestions for user forms
Fixed some odd or Methusalem bugs and made improvements in the workflow behaviour
Update some assets for themes, like jQuery or bootstrap and for bundled-libs, like Smarty, SimplePie, RichText (CKE) etc.
Improved the import class and specific importers to match changed user password hashing since S9y 1.5 and on
Removed and/or beta-upgraded importer files, checked by their latest major release database requirements. The WordPress (only) importer was checked to run!
Improved Plain Text comments mix-ins for now used HTML comments on elder blogs
Improved some themes for edge cases or other oddities
Update some lang description constants
Cleanups for outdated considerations

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 3.9.1 release

2022-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2022/05 - The Serendipity Styx 3.9.1 release

3.9 Bugfix Edition

Finally Styx 3.9.0 brought in an error on some PHP Versions, resulting in a MySQLi error exception writing configuration items to the database, which is now fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience caused!

Styx 3.9.1 contains

Fixed 3.9.0 type error bug on some PHP versions
Fixed another Methusalem bug in the plugin API deleting option items in the database
Update some lang description constants

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 3.9.0 release

2022-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2022/04 - The Serendipity Styx 3.9.0 release

Summer Edition

This mainly is another bugfix & maintenance release with some extraordinary readiness for upcoming PHP 8.2. With PHP 8.2, the Styx AVIF image support is now complete, since not relaying to workarounds or having to disable certain image actions. The new AVIF image format - as to announce again - is something you should expect with excitement for your images, since its encoding compression rate can be quite astonishing without any real visual loss. See an extreme example output for an ESA astronomic image of type image/jpeg with ~1.350 KB, compressed to WebP with ~480 KB and with AVIF to ~16 KB. Imagine what this means watching galleries or pages with lots of images when using the picture-container format.

Styx 3.9.0 contains

Fixed shared installations for tokenized deployment installs
Improved MediaLibrary actions
Finetuned MediaLibrary AVIF image variation relations for PHP 8.2
General fixes and improvements for upcoming PHP 8.2
Added additional notes to several lang option description constants
Add new processing “busy”-focus to several backend parts when probably taking long
Update CKEditor and Bootstrap 4/5 assets
Update Smarty lib to support PHP 8.2
Other consistency and future improvements

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 3.8.2 release

2022-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2022/03 - The Serendipity Styx 3.8.2 release

Easteregg Edition

This mainly is a bugfix & maintenance release.

Styx 3.8.2 contains

Fix author(s) permalinks
Fix installer issues to recognize mod_rewrite environments
Fixes and improvements for the timeline theme
Fix some issue with entryproperties
Remove unused bootstrap sourceMappingURL in templates/_assets
Update ckeditor assets
Other consistency and future improvements

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 3.8.1 release

2022-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2022/02 - The Serendipity Styx 3.8.1 release

Spring Edition

This mainly is a bugfix release fixing install issues.

Styx 3.8.1 fixes the following

Fix installer issues with newer Oracle MySQL versions using the InnoDB engine as default
Fix MariaDB issue up from PHP 8.0.16, which changed the prefix and broke the conditionals
Fixes and improvements for the timeline theme
Sync some latest Smarty security fixes
Other consistency and future improvements

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 3.8.0 release

2022-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2022/01 - The Serendipity Styx 3.8.0 release

Maintenance Release

This mainly is a maintenance release fixing bugs and for polishing other inconsistencies. It also announces a new Serendipity Styx Book [de] revision for Styx 3.8, fetching up with the latest Serendipity Styx Edition development, including new example images. Parts of the main site “help center” were revisited too.

Styx 3.8.0 applies the following

Lots of improvements for the [ pure ] (2022) theme, i.e. adding styles for various plugin and actions
Important fixes for the MediaLibrary synchronization tasks
Improve and extend image Variation (WebP/AVIF) handling for manually added images to the MediaLibrary
Fixes to strictly use unique media names in MediaLibrary only, regardless their position (please filter check your old data)
Fixed some very old bugs, i.e. routing a search request
Improve the comment filters
Fixes and improvements for the /summary/ permalink by arguments, also touched in themes
Upgrade some bundled and asset libraries
Other consistency and UI improvements

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 3.7.1 release

2021-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2021/11 - The Serendipity Styx 3.7.1 release

New Year-Edition

Styx rocks! 🚀

Styx 3.7.1 applies the following since 3.7.0

Improved the [ pure ] theme
Bugfix MySQLi Exception issue with spamblock logging

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 3.7.0 release

2021-12-21T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2021/10 - The Serendipity Styx 3.7.0 release

Christmas-Edition

Improving the dark mode for the standard [ pure ] theme I also developed a dark mode for the Styx website and the Serendipity book. Watch out for the moon or the sun to raise up. I hope you’ll like it as much as I do! 😃 In Blog posts I also added a lightbox to better see bigger image expressions. These now use AVIF or WebP File formats.

Styx 3.7.0 applies the following since the 3.7-beta1

Massively improved the [ pure ] theme dark mode

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Light or dark mode what is the difference

2021-12-09T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2021/9

Light or dark mode, what is the difference and what is your preference?

The more you look on devices, the more you are affected by shining or flashing lightning, hurting your eyes, reducing the battery wastage, having burn affects, show too many blue pixel lights not good for your eyesight, etc.

This is why developers like dark modes.
It helps reducing the noise of light your eyes has to blend out.

So we have a populating ambition to create dark modes on apps, by webpages and by browsers, all over.

Therefore we need to clear some things out, since we have too many players:

At first it started with very single webpages and apps giving a dark mode or dark theme to enable or to live with.
The first case is good, since you decide which you prefer. And in some cases, like developed for the pure theme with upcoming Serendipity Styx 3.7, you can easily switch it by a button where it makes sense to you. It even has a condition if your browser prefers-color-scheme: dark, so it knows where to go when you first arrive without a selected set.
Then it dropped over to systems, like android for example, which allowed to set a dark or light mode preference. The more that came into play, the more the system and other developers thought of generally turning everything dark.
But this is shaky, since a machine or program - even with good algorithms - cannot really decide what looks good or not, or suits you best. Down to the bottom they just turn light into the opposite dark color and vice versa. That only works good as simple as that on pages which are designed as simple as that!

So we have apps and the system.
At last the Browsers started to take over and made the confusion complete.
Browsers have themes. These can be light or dark and influence the whole frame behaviour of your magic monocle.
Then they have modes, which allow to overwrite certain colors of webpages, eg. for link colors.
And they can depend on light themes forcing dark pages, light themes not doings such stuff, dark themes with dark forced pages and dark themes with untouched webpage colors.

But wait! Didn't you say there are system dark modes too? Right! Browsers have to take this conditions into too.

With Firefox 95, which just arrived in the public, you will see this affect. Sudden pages return dark without being explicitly set to, depending on settings you might have taken in your system, browser or application before.
Firefox for example has a "ui.systemUsesDarkTheme" configurable config variable, which is set by your theme choice. The new, beside theme setting and color overwrites, is:

? about:config
? see “layout.css.prefers-color-scheme.content-override”
0 = dark (users may want a light system style, but dark websites)
1 = light (users may want a dark system style, but light websites)
2 = system
3 = browser theme (default original setting = 3)

This check and set can help to restore behaviour you have been used to.

Really! Didn't I say this before? I like dark modes! 😀

Serendipity Styx 3.7-beta1 release

2021-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2021/8 - The Serendipity Styx 3.7-beta1 release

Nikolaus-Edition

Regnet es an Nikolaus, wird der Winter streng, ein Graus.

Trockener St. Nikolaus, milder Winter rund ums Haus.

Styx 3.7-beta1 applies

Add AV1 Image File (AVIF) format option for PHP 8.1 plus release
Fixes for AVIF file generations
Update the CKEditor asset for security
Improved the Styx backend dark mode
Remove outdated Serendipity Series 1 Rich-Text-Editor checkups for plugins
Fix [ b46, b5blog, boot, dude, psg, pure ] theme for Rich Text Editor contactform textarea
Added [ pure ] theme frontend dark mode implementation
Improve WebP with ImageMagick by reducing the quality by dimension range filesizes
Fix and improve images API maintenance image tasker

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx AV1 Image File support

2021-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2021/7 - PHP 8.1 & Serendipity Styx AV1 Image File support

The AV1 Image File format

Serendipity Styx AV1 Image File format groundwork

As already stated when developing the Styx 3.0 Series for WebP there was another image format on the horizon.

This is the AV1 Image File or AVIF format, which offers extreme compression by visually no image quality change compared to the traditional formats like JPEG, PNG, and GIF, and even the relatively new WebP format.

A royalty-free, cross-platform format for media delivery, given support from all big players (Alliance for Open Media), so it is likely to get adopted much faster than the WebP format, which took almost ten years from launch before being supported in Firefox.

AV1 Image File support in browsers and apps

Chrome 85+ and Firefox up from 93+ already support the AVIF format by default. The latest status for browsers supporting AVIF can be found here: [« Can I use »]. Sadly the Safari browser and Apple OS environments are behind, while Android should already work.

AVIF image format delivery

As you know already by working with Styx WebP Variations, uploaded files in standard image formats are additionally stored as new format Variations. So AVIF is yet another Variation stored in the MediaLibrary .v/ directories.

The Styx OUTPUT toolset checks the image AVIF Variation compared with the WebP Variation and always delivers the smaller in filesize. If it is enclosed by the picture element container, the sourceset (srcset) order will always be AVIF first, then WebP and for last as the <img..> element the origin file expression.
In case the WebP srcset image expression is smaller in filesize than the AVIF one, the AVIF srcset is suppressed. This ensures that always the smallest in size is delivered.
Sending this prepared HTML markup to the client, the users browser and environment decides which image it is able to load and to display.

CURRENT IMPORTANT DRAWBACKS of using AVIF format

While most of the things about AVIF are VERY promising and it is likely to become the standard for media delivery in the future, there are some shortcomings that we should be aware of before migrating to AVIF.

The ABSOLUTE MAJOR BOTTLENECK is the encoding performance of AVIF images, which can be VERY SLOW compared to JPEG or WebP images. While the majority of user devices should have no problem decoding AVIF images for display, it can at times take over a minute or two to encode an image to AVIF.

The time and resources required for encoding benefits some images with impressive extreme compression ratios. I had all over from ~30 up to extreme 96,6 percent of image compression ratios without loss.

As the format evolves, the encoding performance is likely to improve in future.

ENVIRONMENTAL ENCODING SUPPORT

Encoding support starts with PHP 8.1 by GD library with release at the end of November 2021 and with ImageMagick up from 7.0.25+ versions.

Uploading files already in WebP or AVIF format was even possible before, but resizes, read out and other actions do need support at least from some PHP build-in methods. There still is work to do, like for getimagesize(), which does not work for AVIF image sizes yet in PHP 8.1 out of the box (see LIMITATIONS).

We have to strongly remind you - when testing - to not upload more than one image at time (!) to not crash your given server resources.
The time of encoding is depending on the origins file size. Sizes under 1 MB won't matter as much as when using images with several Megabytes.

PHP GD and ImageMagick encoding compression are slightly different and their results often surprising comparing all formats. See an example result:

A series of 4 images, concurrently encoded with either ImageMagick (IM) vs PHP GD. Generally image encoding time and results - apart from size - can depend on usage of high dynamic range, lossless or lossy compression, color planes, profiles, wide color gamut, chroma sub-sampling and bit depths of 8, 10, or 12. This is where the differences gain and of course in the images motive type.

Therefore all we need to know is: The new AVIF is the better format.

TEST INFORMATIONS

If you want to get known to AVIF without touching your current blog system, there are third-party service providers like ImageKit with extensive image processing networks to provide decent AVIF encoding performance in real-time for your images. Or using the fascinating tool and conversion privacy of [« avif.io »] which uses Rav1e, Rust and WASM to convert your images clientside.

Styx 3.6 has not yet enabled AVIF support by default. It just states to be groundwork ready for extreme testers and other Developers.

For daring testers I push out a Serendipity Styx 3.7-beta1 soon which will be able to enable AVIF variations per option (temporarily). Keep in mind, that we maybe will NOT be able to just use AVIF variations per Styx default, and as long the requirements are given, for some more years, since performance and other issues like the ones already mentioned were not proofed over several years (as they were for WebP which had much more time landing in mainstream).

That said, enable in « Configuration » - « Image Conversion Settings » - « Enable use of AVIF Variations? ».

Also see some interesting external comparison pages (out of others) for the new format: [« everything you need to know »] and [« 2020 avif has landed »].

POSSIBLE FAILURES

This base implementation is known to fail with certain Variation builds, in special with ImageMagick conversions while developing. So any Variation files with 0 bytes, or AVIF images with 252 bytes (0.25 KB) or 3389 bytes (3.4 KB) or 34165 bytes (34 KB) are considered broken and conditionally excluded from usage. Time will tell if this needs a review for different file systems or just were rare issues on my machine while experimental development only.
FOR ANY TESTERS:
If you see outlined files with webp or avif extension not being displayed by link or by picture container, please file an issue with extended information.

For having discovered certain issues with bigger image sizes, there is a 14MB upload limitation set which avoids running AVIF variation conversions.

Some of the encountered failures I found while development (at least the 0 bytes ones with GD and the 252 bytes with ImageMagick) were connected to some images of certain .jpeg files for the most, while others (jpeg/jpg) did succeed without problems. There seems to be something included to those images which breaks with an "error/heic.c/IsHeifSuccess/135" error, that seems to be a missing something using libde265 for reading and x265 for writing in HEIC.

As you see this is still a process and is further on bound to HEIC/AVIF support compiles on different servers. If you discover failures, don't throw with tables and just note them to be one of those issues which will hopefully get ironed out over time.

LIMITATIONS

PLEASE NOTE, that ALL current PHP versions - including the just now released PHP 8.1 - are not able to thumbsize an image by readable image sizes, when you have an AVIF image format.
The PHP 8.1 standard image format conversions in current Styx 3.6 and 3.7-beta1 state are only able to do so, since they take the same values as the WebP expression as a "stolen" value copy. This is a current Styx PHP workaround and upload limitation as long this is not implemented to PHP without having to use additional libraries.

Some Developers already have stiched together a promising libavifinfo C-file that still needs some final thoughts and reviews but is near to come included to PHP, so we probably will get readable support for AVIF payload containers hidden inside the AVIF file. If this is going to be added to PHP 8.1 is a question and may as well find its way very much later to PHP 8.2 next year.

This also implies to Styx image scaling and rotate actions. So if an AVIF image file or image AVIF Variation file exists - and/or is known broken by filesize image scaling/rotating is prohibited for all formats as long this PHP implementation loss is a matter. Rotate won't throw a message in this case.

Serendipity Styx 3.6.4 release

2021-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2021/6 - The Serendipity Styx 3.6.4 release

Heading to upcoming PHP 8.1

Styx 3.6.4 applies

Add AV1 Image File (AVIF) format for upcoming PHP 8.1 release at the the end of November (More about this in an extra post soon)
Fixes for next PHP 8.1
Backported PHP 8.1 mysqli exception behaviour, which resulted in some extra work for Styx 3.6.x releases.
Updated the Bootstrap and CKEditor assets
Improved backend handlers, sidebar section blocks, etc.
Improve various description constants
Fix [ default-php ] theme for several issues
Fixed an amount of old bugs and regression losses
Improved some password related permissions
Improve dark theme
Fixed themes (check out new dates)

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 3.5.0 release

2021-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2021/5 - The Serendipity Styx 3.5.0 release

Its not the length of changelog descriptions that makes the value or the headline ;-) As announced by rumors very early, the main feature of Styx 3.5 is the DARK MODE, beside all additional improving fixes.

Styx 3.5.0 applies

Extend some more picture WebP variation container backend usage
Updated the Bootstrap and CKEditor assets
Improved backend handlers, like adding back buttons, or action buttons for certain rare cases, etc.
Finally removed old Smarty backward compatibility mode wrapper and configuration sets
Improve backend entry preview array for empty categories and certain themes
Improve fetching image meta data for EXIF data readable file format checks
Added some missing lang constants
Removed a last occurrence of Serendipity Series 0/1 API workarounds
Fixed an amount of old bugs and regression losses
Improved and fixed user handling and permissives
Fixed themes (check out new dates)
Fixed a faulty interpretation with using theme required fields and contactforms, ending up being more strict.
Finally added the DARK MODE, playing well with all sort of difficulties. Improves clarity and contrast as well as the styx backend theme in general.

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download

A pattern preview

2021-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2021/4 - A pattern preview

😎 » Rumors ... 📢 » rumors... » .. 👀

Styx goes dark

Serendipity Styx 3.4.0 release

2021-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2021/3 - The Serendipity Styx 3.4.0 release

Once more … a more theming related release.

Styx 3.4.0 applies

Improved the “B46” theme for “Featured Article” Pro Tip helper
Improved several Styx backend outsigns, as for media properties, pinned entries, for toolbar and plugin/theme/user configuration groups, for icon placements, inline SVGs, etc.
The [ Pure, PSG, Dude, B46 ] themes got some improvements and fixes
Extend WebP added picture sets for plugin/themes configuration items
Improved [ B46, Bootstrap4, Clean-blog, Timeline ] themes to deliver local up-to-date [css/js]-type assets from the new added “_assets” fallback chain
Allow to remove the maintenance section utf8mb4 ready success box by the Administrator
Improved categories and media directory list views
Improved lists filter states by icons
Update template assets
Added a new Bootstrap 5 “Take 5 fallback pool” templates parent theme [ boot ] and a new simple example blog [ b5blog ] depending child theme
Added auto generated SVG [ no preview ] images by runtime to templates w/o preview file
Lots of other fixes as well as other PHP 8 related fixes
And once more removed some old PHP 4/5 and other old Serendipity release references

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 3.3.1 release

2021-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2021/2 - The Serendipity Styx 3.3.1 release

Heading to Styx 3.4 some odd behaviours mainly for PHP 8 were found that made it happen to release an intermediate point bugfix release.

Styx 3.3.1 applies

Fix history plugin for multiyears with a non matching leap day case
Some new filter status state icons were added
The [ Pure, PSG, Dude, B46 ] themes got some minor improvements and fixes
In the core, a cased PHP 8 (hidden) error by an empty frontend stylesheet call was fixed
Improved multi engine themes configuration load behaviour, fixing an old bug
Intentional estimated for 3.4, but for now removed deprecated old default widgets from dashboard overview (and adding an upgrade task to clean up)
Fix some PHP 8 installer issues with SQLite and PostreSQL databases
Update template assets jQuery lib to 3.6.0
some other fixes

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 3.3.0 release

2021-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2021/1 - The Serendipity Styx 3.3.0 release

Due to PHP 8 and its stricter error reporting many hidden flaws have been ironed out.

Styx 3.3.0 applies

Once more Styx continued its work to clean up old occurrences for the new Series 3 branch, in example the old mysql and sqlrelay db include files and remaining type references
Removed outdated feed RSS 0.91 and ATOM_03 templates files and references
Allow backend configuration sets for plugin_html_nugget textareas
Strongly improved the “B46 [Black Edition]” bootstrap theme for having advanced lists view features
Improve “Spartacus” for reading the full requirements array, which allows to check extended plugin requirements on UPGRADE
Removed outdated “bulletproof” core template to additional_plugins pool
Removed “pure19” core template completely, considering the “pure” 2020 Standard themes flexing grid as good enough for all
Updated Smarty and Rich Text Editor (CKEditor) library assets
Added lots of improvements and bug fixes for themes all over
Added more slowly growing (experimental) support for upcoming file format “avif”, an AV1 codec based new image format. PHP 8 and GDlib still do not not support it yet. So, please wait!
Improved the serendipity_die() mode for errors vs maintenance mode
Improved core APIs
and more!

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 3.2.0 release

2020-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2020/9 - The Serendipity Styx 3.2.0 release

Serendipity Styx 3.2.0 was delayed a little bit, heading to next 3.3, since the new PHP 8.0.0 release just dropped in when it was quite ready to look out of the door. So I spend 3 more weeks to make it a PHP 8 ready release! Now you can start right off using the latest PHP. It does not say the PHP 8 fixes are already complete, but all main functions just for starting a new blog without complains are done. Time will tell for extended features off the wider Mainstream.

Styx 3.2.0 applies

Once more Styx continued its work to clean up old occurrences for the new Series 3 branch.
Styx 3.2 has improved for database storage. Since MySQL by ourselves was and is used as a synonym for MariaDB, which is our recommended database, Styx 3.2 now uses the ARIA storage engine format. Multibyte UTF-8 INDEX key length tweaks are done by the differing versions available, which are old MyISAM or InnoDB engines, or MariaDB 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 releases. The best one available is MariaDB 10.5 which allows us to not touch any INDEX keys for length limits. For Styx upgraders this means that we will have to wait until this latter version has landed in Mainstream before we start touching old database installs on UPGRADE.
Improved “pure” theme for some special cases
Added the new “B46 [Black Edition]” bootstrap theme for latest 4.5.3 release. The expected bootstrap 4.6.0 version did not make it in time.
Added the new “PSG” theme example, for a theme based start grid page.
Fixed some buggy WebP variation image edge cases which might have hit you playing around (read the ChangeLog on how to react)
Improved the media grid in filter(ed) lists, and to remember per User Cookie
Iconized several backend instances for viewability, like: MediaLibrary filtered status in the media toolbar, and stackable Plugins by their status, and for hotlink media shares to ML backend media properties, and for “has hidden suboption(s)” plugins option placeholders
Added lots of improvements and bug fixes for PHP methods, language constants, core plugins, and/or other internal methods. Ask for help on future language system changes!
Upgrade some libraries, like the basic Rich Text Editor, etc.
and more!

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 3.1.0 release

2020-08-29T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2020/8 - The Serendipity Styx 3.1.0 release - Jules edition.

Styx 3.1.0 applies

Series 3 continued its work to clean up old occurrences. This implies moving the Smarty “/cache/” directory, renaming the backends main javascript (template) files from serendipity_editor.js to serendipity_styx.js and more.
Styx 3.1 now also features some new web standards or better handles W3C living standards, like better secured cookie attributes for current browser needs, or adding per default the image “loading=lazy” attribute for saving bandwidth, or adding living standard rel=”noopener” attribute to all target=”_blank” links, and so on.
Improved both “pure” themes responsiveness for special cases
Approved a deep inspection to the installer and recommended must-haves
Added lots of fixes for PHP methods, language constants, core plugins, and/or other internal methods, like fixes for Atom and the RSS feeds
Added code highlight asset and improved the basic Rich Text Editor configuration allowing h-formats and videos and multilingual blog post elements

Check out the ChangeLog for details, or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 3.0.3 release

2020-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2020/7 - The Serendipity Styx 3.0.3 bugfix release.

Styx 3.0.3 applies

Improve both “pure” themes for unconfigured explorations and for the expanding grid on fresh installs without having any content yet
Improve “dude” theme expanding grid for fresh installs without having any content yet
Fixup both “pure” themes mobile footer navigation showup for unconfigured explorations
Improve both “pure” themes mobile footer overlaying last sidebar items

Check out the ChangeLog for details or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 3.0.2 release

2020-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2020/6 - The Serendipity Styx 3.0.2 bugfix release.

Styx 3.0.2 applies

Fix “pure” (2020) standard theme regression for all 1-sidebar structures, fixing left only sidebars to left and for the flexible grids.
Improve “dude” theme using a 8-column CSS3 grid on desktop sizes, replacing the floats.
Extend the printArchives() counter to exclude group restricted entries
Update to minor CKEditor 4.14.1 assets release

Check out the ChangeLog for details or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 3.0.1 release

2020-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2020/5 - The Serendipity Styx 3.0.1 bugfix release.

Styx 3.0.1 applies

Fixes some (minor) 3.0.0 upgrade issues
Improves some (minor) upgrade and installer tasks
Renamed the 3.0.0 standard pure theme to “pure 2019” and to further live as a child theme of pure (2020).
Changed the “pure” (2020) standard theme to use a modern CSS3 grid technique for responsive layout actions, since there was a comment fields issue with the layout javascript in combination with the CKE RichTextEditor and the Android GBoard App on mobiles.
Fixes wrong cookie assignment condition for addmedia lastdir directory
Allow RichTextEditor comment areas in the dude (theme), since also using CSS3 grid techniques
Improved some language constants and messages
Improved some (minor) backend styles
. . .
The improved autoupdate plugin does now allow to delete all previous zip update version files. Please enable this option first before performing your upgrade! This can free up lots of Megabytes on old blogs.

Check out the ChangeLog for details or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 3.0.0 release

2020-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2020/4 - The new Serendipity Styx 3.0 major release.

Preamble

Styx 3.0 breaks with longterm backward compatibility for upgraders. It cleans up various old workarounds, changed APIs for consistency, refactored the media API, removed polyfills and exceptions in special for Serendipity Series revisions that are older than 2.0. This is a very need to further improve code and code design in future. The 2.9 branch releases are recommended to do these steps for elder Serendipity versions first. One could say, the complete 2.9 branch is part of working on Styx 3.0. Read about it in blog posts down below.

Requirements

Serendipity Styx 3.0 does not only require an up-to-date PHP version from PHP 7.3, it also requires PHP/GD/ImageMagick with –webp support and an openSSL version which is at least a Debian (10) Buster alike version of 1.1.1d for strongest GCM login encryption!

KEY-FEATURES of Serendipity Styx 3.0

Styx 3.0 now enables the last piece for complete independence, that is theming. The standard theme was changed to the new “pure” theme, and some more were added to the core release, while others, rather old ones, were removed from core and went into the new additional themes Styx repository theming pool. This last piece of physical Styx independence was bound-in to now point to rewritten or at least deeply checked additional themes only, and to work with this current Styx version, adding all the needs and removing all the deprecations, which had summed up over years of nearly two decades.
In the BACKEND, various improvements were done and the Media Library got a new default file format called webP, which deeply improves the size of inbound images (jpg, gif, png) along roundabout 30%, by keeping the origins quality without loss. This enables us, for example, to better handle more than the default of 8 media items per page, without performance or load issues. This also applies to the themes and additional_themes backend previews. To now have this new file format available as an additional image media item “variation”, enables Styx to use a modern <picture> HTML element using <source> sourcesets, which still supports the origin format (like jpg) as the fallback when the visitors browser does not support it.
Further on key features are ImageMagick 7 library support, on-the-fly change Media Grid Columns in the MediaLibrary, improved theme handlers, a complete remove of the Rich Text Editor htmlarea approach (CKEditor), which further on lives as an asset, basic only package in the templates directory, though still bringing up improvements like Emojis Panel and so on. This is also used for the frontend commentform if having enabled secured html comments. It is recommended to extend this library by using the additional CKEplus event plugin.
The recommended MariaDB/MySql utf8mb4 database collation is now utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci. JQuery raised to latest revision, as well as all other bundled libraries if possible. And so on. All relevant bugfixes found over year were already backported to the 2.9 branch.

Check out the ChangeLog for details or even read the commit history for more. See download.

Serendipity Styx 2.9.5 release

2020-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2020/3 - The Serendipity Styx 2.9 branch 2.9.5 release.

Styx 2.9.5 applies

Fixes some upgrade task issues upgrading from old Serendipity (S9y) versions
Fixes some database utf8mb4 migration issues when upgrading from (ditto)
Fixes very old password MD5 migration issues when upgrading from (ditto)
Fixes a backend style for rare case
Fixes some spamblock cases with filter checks and newer mysql versions
Added some Smarty backward-compatibility methods for very lazy upgraders. This only applies to this 2.9 branch and is done only, while the thrown exception error reasons were unguessable for non-professionals. Do not wait; Do it now!
Again, PLEASE read the 2.9.1 blog post for further branch upgrades only! The 3.0-beta1 release is very near!
While this revision is a good new start and endpoint for s9y migration upgrades, the help centers installation guide got an update, recommended to read.

Check out the ChangeLog for details or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 2.9.4 release

2020-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2020/2 - The Serendipity Styx 2.9 branch 2.9.4 release.

Styx 2.9.4 applies

Fixes Spartacus Pluginlist Synchronisation issues
Fixes a MEDIA.base_properties property_subgroup assignment. Regressional fixes went to frontend related media_showitem.tpl template themes [default, default-php, 2k11]. Watch out for custom copy themes.
Fixes the (MySQL) “simple” Install routine for utf8mb4 usage. Auto fix previous “simple” installs by maintenance check.
Again, PLEASE read the 2.9.1 blog post for further branch upgrades only! The 3.0-beta1 release is near!

Check out the ChangeLog for details or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 2.9.3 release

2020-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2020/1 - The Serendipity Styx 2.9 branch 2.9.3 release.

Styx 2.9.3 applies

Some Bugfixes for extended Serendipity features
Some Bugfixes for Serendipity Styx themes. Watchout for copy/child themes!
Some security related fixes
Improvement for the comment underline assignment. Check some elder comments!
Again, PLEASE read the 2.9.1 blog post for further branch upgrades only!

Check out the ChangeLog for details or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 2.9.2 release

2019-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2019/5 - The Serendipity Styx 2.9 branch 2.9.2 release.

Styx 2.9.2 applies

Some Bugfixes for extended Serendipity features
Support branch upgrades only by manually applied configuration change. PLEASE read the previous 2.9.1 blog post!

Check out the ChangeLog for details or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 2.9.1 release

2019-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2019/4 - The Serendipity Styx 2.9 branch 2.9.1 release.

While heavy development of upcoming Serendipity Styx 3.0 is making huge progress, several issues were found in the 2.9 branch too. This is a point BugFix release.

Having laid in bed with Yoko, this is the Woodstock success Revision. No Chaos - just Peace and Happiness - and the destroying beauty of Jimis SSB - Just Wow! :)

Branching your Autoupdate Notifier for 2.9.x

Since having already noted that upcoming Styx Next is a major upgrade (see 2.9.0 post), which will require a modern PHP 7 version, we have to give some Important Notes about branches and future upgrades.

The current alpha state of the masters branch NEXT Development already requires PHP 7.1.3 as the absolute Minimum. This may even raise up to a required PHP 7.3.x version before (beta) release(s) in the next few months, in 2019/20. If you still are on Debian 9 last stable Stretch for example, you actually have a PHP 7.0.x version running that will not change until a Debian 10 Buster upgrade is performed. Even though it is possible to upgrade such a system to a newer PHP version, even provided by its Maintainer, some of you have or want to stick to PHP 5.6 or PHP 7.0 a little longer.

Serendipity Styx 3.0 does not only require an up-to-date PHP version, it also requires PHP/GD/ImageMagick with --webp support and an openSSL version which is at least a Debian Buster version like 1.1.1d for strongest login encryption! DO NOT use upcoming 3.0 on a system less than Debian Buster (10)!

To not get in conflict with the upcoming major 3.0 upgrade(s), you have to set up a new Update-RELEASE-file URL in your Backend Configuration Panel. Open Configuration - General Settings - and see the option Update RELEASE-file URL. There you add this new URL, pointing to the branch RELEASE file and submit the form: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ophian/styx/styx2.9/docs/RELEASE

Now you will only get future update request notes if a new branch release, like (next) 2.9.2 is prepared to supply. If you then are ready for upcoming Styx 3.0 Next, you just change it back to the master branch at: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ophian/styx/master/docs/RELEASE

Styx 2.9.1 runs (…some highlights)

Bugfix some non violent extended features of Serendipity (in the MediaLibrary and Plugins)
Fix some Themes extending features
Added global frontend styles for the new figure/figcaption support, and let the CKEditor notice these elements
Fixed the wrong counted assign for the (optional) stable Archive
Some language constant fixes and improvements

Check out the ChangeLog for details or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 2.9.0 release

2019-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2019/3 - The Serendipity Styx 2.9.0 release - 50 years Montreal “Bed-In” “Give Peace a Chance” (1969) Edition.

Since the more template focused Styx 2.8.0 version was somehow delayed in early April 2019 and then was overrun by a real flood of Core improvements and fixes, this version was abandoned in favor of 2.9.0.

Serendipity Styx is PHP 7.3 READY and requires PHP from 5.5+! This is the LAST edition supporting the old PHP 5 Series and will only get security or important bugfixes as point releases. Serendipity Styx NEXT will be 3.0, which will require a modern PHP 7.x version.

Styx 2.9.0 runs (…some highlights)

Various THEMES were improved to give a better migration to HTML5. Read on in the ChangeLog and keep your copy themes up-to-date!
Various old and some newer bugs were fixed
Improved media renaming and for all db types
Improved various group permission related access privileges
Important Security fixes
Improved error reporting for all DB layers
Improved backend comments list counter by permissions
Upgrade jQuery lib
UTF8 mb4 support ready for all DB types
Trackback improvements
NL2BR plugin nl2p-mode improvements
Timeline theme update
Improved setCookie
Improved access for auto-update method
Various language constant fixes and improvements

It is again a GOOD IDEA to take the advantage of starting a new copy template, before adapting each single theme change to your old copy themes!

Check out the ChangeLog for details or even read the commit history for more. See download

A word about distribution politics

2019-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2019/2

A word about (server) Distribution politics for the ImageMagick graphics package and new exciting image formats!

There are two current versions of ImageMagick, the LTS-alike version 6, which will be supported for another 7+ years and the rewrite version 7, being a little more strict and which becomes new features and enhancements etc. This will give legacy applications more time to upgrade to version 7.

The current stable Debian 9 "stretch" is running IM 6.9.7.x, while upcoming Debian 10 "buster" and "sid" are at IM 6.9.10.x versions. That means, it seems that even for dist-upgrades the next ~5 years there will be no change, without giving the opportunity to run both versions co-existing in your environment. Same issue for Centos/Fedora or Ubuntu. Fedora Devs stated to support the co-existing tooling, so that migration is at least possible over the years.

Serendipity Styx does already support ImageMagick 7 processing.

WebP support is another thing coming up. As you might have noticed, bigger web sites already use WebP images more and more. WebP is a new image format developed by Google, which is both, lossy and lossless. WebP-related software is released under a BSD license. It is a sister Project of VP8 video and WebM multimedia formats. I am truly convinced that this will be the NEW open standard for lossy compressed true-color graphics on the web in the near future, producing much smaller files of comparable image quality to the older JPEG and PNG schemes. There are limitation as ever, since you need a browser to support it - well, and the good thing is the most already do - and you need PHP builds enabled --with-webp, you need either PHP GD having it enabled (see gd_info()) or ImageMagick build with webP support, which is ready for Debian 10 since 6.9.10.23+dfsg-1 version (see above).

Unwilling to wait?

You can do one thing about it now. Load the free available tool cwebp and pre convert your images to the new format before you upload them to your blog. If you then have PHP 7 with GD enabled WebP support or even the mentioned IM (or better) versions, then you can already use WebP in your Styx MediaLibrary with success. If not, you cannot create an upload auto thumb of this format for the moment and probably have to wait until Styx will release the next major version 3.0.

Happy Birthday old girl

2019-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2019/1 - 16 years of Serendipity

You’ve come a long way, ... what a fortunate stroke of serendipity !

Its time to give an update of development and the future plans for Serendipity. Upcoming Serendipity Styx 2.8 revision will be the last update for the old and outdated PHP 5 Series and future 2.8.x dot versions will only address security or real bug fixes.

Serendipity Styx 2.8.0 will prepare the core system themes for consistency and to easily live in these modern “mobile-device” times without breaking too much for fallback or engine depend themes.

Then Serendipity Styx will strongly jump right to 3.0 and will further only support PHP 7 Editions. And it will be (much more) “feature” complete. 🙂

I sat for years and found you saying:
Never mind old chap, I will resist
kill my bugs, that still persist!

Serendipity Styx 2.7.0 release

2018-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2018/6 - The Serendipity Styx 2.7.0 New Year’s Eve Release Edition is out! Serendipity Styx is PHP 7.3 READY and requires PHP from 5.5+! Approximately this is the last edition supporting the old PHP 5 Series, since its End of Life support just ended.

Styx 2.7.0 runs (…some highlights)

Various old and some new bugs were fixed
Various THEMES were improved again, either updated, or revisited for certain places, like the new “pcomments.tpl” file for paged comment shortcut pages. Read on in the ChangeLog and keep your copy themes up-to-date!
Improve media directory list, adding the number of local media entries
Improve categories list, adding the number of associated entries
Multiple improvements for the MediaLibrary, like lowercase .ext conversion and adding possible missing media file extensions for image types.
Improve the Media Gallery markup and display notation (referred to rendering) to run and float with the much better column ordered lists, compared to a per row display gallery.
Improve the Maintenance widget page to display items column-ordered
Preparations to allow and replace hidden-category entries by the categorytemplates event plugin, which makes it possible to use categories/entries independently.
Various lang constant fixes and improvements, like finding a better name for the MediaLibrary in german [de] language files.
Add a new “Zombie Plugin Manager” Clearance Maintenance Spot, to get rid of old, locally outdated and unsynchronized plugins, physically. This has a “dependency” twin in ZARATHUSTRA, an upgrade task, which makes (unused) local plugins upgradeable via Spartacus for the case of being (re-)installed again in future.
Works on PHP 7.3 readiness

It might again be a good idea to take the advantage of starting a new copy template before adapting each single theme change to your old copy themes!

Check out the ChangeLog for details or even read the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 2.6.1 - Bugfix Release

2018-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2018/5 - Short bugfix update for certain issues

Refactor, Rebuild, Regression

Mainly an odd plain editor NL2BR / NL2P parsing regression was fixed, that prevented correct parsing of plain text markup_elements in certain situations.

Also the maintenance MediaLibrary-Synchronizer thumbnail rebuilding area was refactored and conditionally fixed. It now works very much as expected.

Serendipity Styx Edition is up to date!

As ever, read the ChangeLog or even the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 2.6.0 - A Back-to-the-Roots Release

2018-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2018/4 - Long years of activity and continuously deep development have finally brought this shiny new release up to your attention.

So what is the difference?

The difference is under the hood. since Serendipity Styx does hold what was promised with Serendipity for such a long time.

The changes and fixes are uncountable. A very simple Serendipity user won't hardly ever notice, except for some obvious GUI related changes, since ‘he’ does not care of all the extended promises, which do not work for the reason of being unfinished from start or being borked by in past added tweaks or the fluent development. The one writes some articles, uploads an image, uses some categories and may even get some comments. Thats it!
Nothing to worry about, nothing to care. As you might know, a production release is designed to be very forgiving and let the users simply do their work. All seems well-matched and pleasant ready for extended future usage...

Yes, this is where the Serendipity Styx Edition comes into place. Its not there to be overconfident and say it is ever ready, since the author himself is always impressed and amazed of how much of those bugged or unfinished properties he has to face and to fix in the ongoing release cycles. But since having fixed an enormous amount of bugs and failing design patterns, Serendipity Styx is proud to say, that it has been done as much as possible, to polish and tune this up and keep the tremendous goal alive of being simple and infinite extendable together at the same time. All the past Designers of Serendipity conceptualised a system that kept to be incredibly modern and predictive, which is not that easy seeing all these fast and immense development progresses in these first two decades of the 21st century, regarding programming languages, design patterns and security.

Now, what exactly has happened since the Beta?

Serendipity Styx decided to go back to the roots. It changed the backend to where it belongs to, the default theme. While Serendipity 2.0 was developed over 2 years of heavy picking and replacing, a very lot of old XHTML and HTML4 code was replaced and therefore it was quite obvious to append the new developed Smarty Backend to the HTML5 Standard theme, which is 2k11. Since 2k11 sloughed the previously used Standard Theme Bulletproof, it tried to replace and take apart the “default” theme, which even got more and more a forgotten fallback template quarry to take out old and unfocused things. The bleeding rest. To be blunt: 2k11 tried to take over. This even got more and more relevant with the new backend and was a long going process of around 5 years in total. It was not that much in focus to think about the real relevance of default and standard. And that even more, since the Standard Theme name is held in the $serendipity['defaultTemplate'] variable, which does not really help to sharpen the difference. 😉

Back to the roots means in these terms: Default is the place of the last fallback cascade, not that much the present or absolute recommended frontend theme. It is the Serendipity Theme Basement, which is the right place to put a backend, since everything ends up here. A Standard Theme by comparison is just a current set, used and recommended standard for the weblog frontend. All items that are relevant to fall back, like remaining images for example and not particularly bound to the standard, are found in “default”.

One benefit of this change - apart from the simplification of understanding - is to be able now to simply force a standard theme change, without having to deal with the backend and fallback. That’s what it’s for.

What else?

A lot of deep inspection went into debugging the workflow between the core and some main external plugins logic and the Smarty template compiler. Since Smarty has an error suppressing handler it does not yell about unset or false variables, as long as you do ask the right conditional question. Answers may are others than you expect, but since being suppressed are not always that relevant to the conditional output. We have lived with it for years. Serendipity Styx did try to find all these unsharp needles and fixed them in the release themes. This is why you are strongly recommended to start a new theme copy, if already working with a copy template. For sure all additional themes over Serendipity-Origin repositories have not been touched for this relation!

Serendipity Styx would really like to take them over into this repositories account, to get rid of remaining Smarty2 API usage, forcing the core to hold backward compatible methods and fix the most prominent of these mentioned “bugs” above. But sadly this all takes too much of extremely valuable free memory GitHub space, until someone sponsors Styx with a real paid unlimited account and even something more like being a Patreon.

The Serendipity Styx Book [de] and the Serendipity Styx site documentary have been updated to already reflect some or most of these changes; Also the upgrade guide in the [en] documentary installation notes was partly reworked. It all is an ongoing process and I hope I haven’t missed that much to rewrite.

The Spartacus plugin was touched to get rid of the custom Styx pointer and ZARATHUSTRA (a local plugin version synchronizer) was added to the upgrade tasks. For all these changes you need to allow the upgrade tasks to run automatically for you.

And of course, Serendipity Styx is deeply tested with the latest PHP 7.2 release.

As a last-minute bonbon the maintenance section got extended with a so called "Theme Manager Clearance Spot". This will help you to quickly get rid of any private or additional themes in your themes directory, without having to start FTP once. Naturally benefits upgraders only.

Have fun and be productive with Serendipity Styx!
Ian Styx

As ever, read the ChangeLog or even the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 2.6-beta1 release

2018-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2018/3 - Serendipity Styx Edition 2.6-beta1 has lots of small improvements and/or fixes for the general workflow and extended Serendipity features. Check the ChangeLog for details!

Two of them - regarding comments - are the emergency spamblock killswitch-option to also hide the frontend commentforms and the new timeframe-option to disable comments after X days, i.e. when you don’t want to allow old entries comments, which usually don’t get very much valid comments after a certain amount of time.
The NL2BR-plugins P-option part was reworked, since the old code - not very ambitious - did not catch more advanced markups. This still is not absolutely bulletproof and you should always check what it produces in the frontend. The Styx recommendation for easy and extended use is to allow the WYSIWYG-Editor, in special the advanced CKEplus Plugin Edition.
Smarty and jQuery libs were updated. The latter even jumped up two major revisions to v.3.3.1, so quite some old methods won’t work any more or be called deprecated. This will only hit you if using an old plugin that has not been updated or been recognised to do so, or if using custom themes with old jQuery javascript code. It does not make sense to keep unsupported libraries because of laziness! 😃
The Spartacus plugin moved from custom mirror to Styx GitHub repository in the Spartacus configuration. All other mirror options were removed, since not making any sense with the Styx Edition. Additional themes are still fetched by the s9y origin repository. Additional themes most likely are highly outdated and should only be used with some deeply spend love. The Styx repository would certainly do some groundwork help for you, but as long as using this free and limited GitHub OpenSource account, without any Sponsor, this is not possible!
Since ImageMagick-7 versions more and more take place on servers, the Serendipity image processing order using different Operator-types and Setting parameters was re-checked and fixed, were it was silently ignored or tolerated by IM 6 versions and failed with the more strict ImageMagick-7 Series.
The most changing part went into debugging the Smarty template variables, without silenced undefined or unclear variables, which found quite some bugs or misinterpretations. This changed a lot of logic and variable workflow. Therefore the best recommendation for template copies is to start from scratch, to get all the tiny or bigger changes for the release themes, while most theme copies just do some user stylesheet changes.

As ever, read the ChangeLog or even the commit history for more. See download

Serendipity Styx 2.5.0 release

2018-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2018/2 - The 2.5.0 release is out! Check the ChangeLog for details! Serendipity Styx is PHP 7.2 ready and requires PHP from 5.5+!

Styx 2.5.0 runs (…some highlights)

[NEW vs BETA] Various old and some new bugs were fixed. Example Gratia: the fixed bold markup interpretation of *words* by s9ymarkup or the XHTML-tag cleanup for ATOM feeds. Read the ChangeLog file.
[NEW vs BETA] Various THEMES were improved again, either updated, or revisited for certain places, like the shortcut pages for comments. Read on in the ChangeLog.
Various changes for encryption and hash generation were sorted out. Their usage depends on the PHP version used, getting stronger.
Multi cleanup for old bundled PEAR-libs and compatibility modes vs. update of external libs (Paragonie, simplePie, Pear, Smarty).
Various bug fixes, alongside with improvements like for the PLAIN TEXT Editor.
Set default Standard Backend ‘template_backend’ to Styx (2styx).
Add new “bootstrap 4” theme.
Multi changes and fixes for the Backend comments list, ie. the new moderate on/off buttons, or the new pending comment hideaway.
Regarding the European General Data Protection Regulation Act, taking action on May 25th, all plugins and themes were changed or prepared to collect “legal impact” information data for the newly added serendipity_event_dsgvo_gdpr plugin, which adds “legal consent” actions to user forms or even the blog.
Themes changes were made for consistency (serendipity message selectors), for GDPR (in clean-blog, skeleton, timeline) and real improvements for post comment author owners (in 2k11, next).
The NL2BR plugin found a bad interpretation of the ISO-lation tag option and improved the NL2P (experimental) option. Please review your settings on upgrade!
Again some improving changes in the language constants.
Last, but not least, a new option arrived, to run secured HTML comments. This option allows having coding example parts in comments and comments generally displayed more nicely. Since being a heavy change with “security impact”, this requires CHECKED comments, which should be your owners interest anyway!

It might be a good idea to take the advantage of starting a new copy template before adapting each single theme change to your old copy themes!

See download

Serendipity Styx 2.5-beta1 release is on the road

2018-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

N° 2018/1 - The 2.5-beta1 release is ready for attention! Check the ChangeLog for details! Styx should now be PHP 7.2.x ready and requires PHP from 5.5+!

Styx 2.5-beta1 runs (…some highlights)

Various changes for encryption and hash generation were sorted out. In example, PHP 7.1.3+ now uses a GCM SSL encryption, which forces to create a new login cookie, if in use.
Multi cleanup for old bundled PEAR-libs and compatibility modes vs. update external libs (Paragonie, simplePie, Pear, Smarty).
Various bug fixes, alongside with improvements like for the PLAIN TEXT Editor.
Set default Standard Backend ‘template_backend’ to Styx (2styx).
Add new “bootstrap 4” theme.
Multi changes and fixes for the Backend comments list, likewise the new moderate on/off buttons, or the new pending comment hideaway.
Regarding the European General Data Protection Regulation Act, taking action in mid-May, all plugins and themes were changed to collect “legal impact” information data for the newly added serendipity_event_dsgvo_gdpr plugin, which adds “legal consent” actions to user forms or even the blog.
Themes changes were made for consistency (serendipity message selectors), for GDPR (in clean-blog, skeleton, timeline) and real improvements for post comment author owners (in 2k11, next).
The NL2BR plugin found a bad interpretation of the ISO-lation tag option and improved the NL2P (experimental) option. Please review your settings on upgrade!
Again some improving changes in the language constants.
Last, but not least, a new option arrived, to run secured HTML comments. This option allows having coding example parts in comments and comments generally displayed more nicely. Since being a heavy change with “security impact”, this requires CHECKED comments, which should be your owners interest anyway!

See download

The new Serendipity Styx website - finally

2018-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

This January I started my new years 2018 Styx revision of the Serendipity Book, which finally needed a handy place and mockup to be presented to the readers.

For this I created this shiny new…

Serendipity Styx Edition Home website, to document what needed to be documented for Serendipity and Serendipity Styx.
There is no need to hop-over to S9y origin any more. Everything is in place and hopefully well organized.
The revised documents have been placed into the Styx [en] help center pages.
The german Styx Book is outside of this but bound into the same site environment.
Even Spartacus found a sparkling new home and you will now be able to enjoy outstanding and well cared Styx Plugins and origin Serendipity additional Themes here.
…
Since the last 2.4 release, the Styx development has slowed down a bit, but I am sure that 2018 will see some outstanding releases again.

Enjoy Styx !

PS. Please give me a note if you found something to tweak or make even better. Thanks.

Serendipity Styx 2.4.0 was released

2017-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

The Styx November 2.4.0 RELEASE brings exiting news for MySQLi users, “finally” fixes the MediaLibrary and adds some new widgets. And certainly much more. Check the ChangeLog for details! Styx is PHP 7.1.x ready!

Styx 2.4.0 runs (…some highlights)

Set minimum required PHP version to 5.4+.
Adding the migration task for full UTF8MB4 unicode support on MySQL server databases >= v.5.5.3
Installing new MySQL systems already UTF8MB4 ready, if supported
Adding a new spamblocklog CLEANUP widget for SPAM-blown-up log database tables
Adding and moving certain core plugins to the “additional_plugins” Spartacus repository. One of it is the new responsiveimages event plugin, which creates an easy way for authors to upload differently sized images and to scale images to the visitors viewport width.
Fixing some more old and odd bugs in the MediaLibrary and its tasks (see changelog for details)
Preparations for translated theme info strings in the theme info layer, already done for [de]
Lots of optimising for the lang constants and others made translatable
Important upgrade task fix for plugins out of sync. This is important to not have untouched and famished plugins lying around.
Other optimized (backend) handlers and bugfixes
Latest Smarty lib
SQLite optimizations
And more…

See download

Serendipity Styx 2.4-beta1 was released

2017-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

The Styx October 2.4-beta1 release brings exiting news for MySQLi users, “finally” fixes the MediaLibrary and adds some new widgets. And much more. Check the ChangeLog for details! And remember, Styx is PHP 7.1.x ready!

Styx 2.4-beta1 runs (…some highlights)

Set minimum required PHP version to 5.4+
Adding the migration task for full UTF8MB4 unicode support on MySQL server databases >= v.5.5.3
Installing new mysql systems already UTF8MB4 ready, if supported
Adding a new spamblocklog CLEANUP widget for SPAM-blown-up log database tables
Adding responsiveimages event plugin, which creates an easy way for authors to upload differently sized images and to scale images to the visitors viewport width
Fixing some more old and odd bugs in the MediaLibrary and its tasks (see changelog for details)
Preparations for translated theme info strings in the theme info layer, already done for [de]
Lots of optimising for the lang constants
Other optimized (backend) handlers and bugfixes
And some more…

See download

Serendipity Styx 2.3.0 was released

2017-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

The Styx September 2.3.0 release brings another bunch of fixes for the MediaLibrary and adds the new gallery widget. And much more. Check the ChangeLog for details!
Styx is PHP 7.1.x ready!

Styx 2.3.0 runs (…some highlights)

Adding the new Gallery Widget for simple and easy gallery entries
Fixing old bugs in the MediaLibrary and refactored image processing
Lots of optimising for the comments, ping- and trackbacks
Latest Smarty
Strengthens Maintenance Mode handling
Enhance and optimise $serendipity[‘logger’] log/* files usage
Theme changes and security
Preparations for the future
And certainly a lot more…

See download

Serendipity Styx 2.2.0 was released

2017-06-24T00:00:00+00:00

Styx 2.2.0 June release did not only finalise the 2.1.0 Snapshot, it also brought in some exiting new additions. Check the ChangeLog!

Styx 2.2.0 runs (…some highlights)

Works on Readiness for PHP 7.1
Optimise backend comments list for a better distinction of Comments/Trackbacks/Pingbacks
Secure and optimise the modemaintain plugin
Improve the Dashboard
Add and use random_bytes() to generate cryptographically secure pseudo-random bytes
Enhances Themes
Added secure installer with a token
Lots of Backend optimizations
Replace the old and deprecated mcrypt library with openssl for login attempts
And lots more..!

See download

Serendipity Styx 2.1.0 was released

2017-01-26T00:00:00+00:00

#January 2017, 26th - Styx 2.1.0 was released.

A very intense cared release shot and more of a 2.2 version, which will follow soon, to demonstrate what Styx is in real life. See download

Serendipity Styx 2.1-dev migration builds

2016-09-03T00:00:00+00:00

January 2017, 30th - Serendipity Styx 2.1rc1 was released.

December 2016, 28th - Serendipity Styx 2.1-beta3 was released.

September 2016, 26th - Serendipity Styx 2.1-beta2 was released.

September 2016, 03rd - Serendipity Styx 2.1-beta1 was released.

January 2016, 04th - Migration start

As you can see, the migration of Serendipity origin to Serendipity Styx took nearly one full year.

Epigraph: “Trouvez ce que vous avez attendez pas à regarder”

The main focus of Serendipity Styx 2.1 developer builds were rewrites in some older legacy parts of the core (URL routing, template fallback chain, experimental internal caching) as well as PHP7 compatibility in the API or external libs. Serendipity Styx had many month more time to develop and to mature, which made these development releases well-shaped bundles.

Notable changes include (…some highlights)

Various fixes all over - even in themes [ Read the ChangeLog! ]
New bundled responsive themes “Timeline” and “Clean-Blog”
Improved usability of plugin upgrades
Dashboard and Maintenance Section enhancements
Permission checks for the dashboard output and comments
Usability improvements to the media library, bulk moving support
Usability improvements to comments
Smarty library update, which brought the need for some template fixes, but - out of others - enhances Smarty, since inheritance is no longer a compile time process.
Re-integrated and reworked two very unique example themes, which is a PHP theme (default-php) and a simple XML (output) theme (default-xml).
Updates to other core bundled-libs as much as possible.
Usage of Zend-DB was reworked for most common cases (still marked experimental).
Added Maintenance “serendipity_event_changelog” widget.
Added Plugin-Update-Notifier “serendipity_event_plugup” plugin.
Some other changes or additions need to be found and/or enabled; Well, it truly is Serendipity, isn’t it?

See download