Akvo RSR release notes
RELEASE_NOTES.txt, v0.9.18
last changed: 6 Aug 2010, gvh
Akvo RSR (Really Simple Reporting) is part of the Akvo Platform. The Akvo Platform is used on Akvo.org to combat poverty through small-scale water and sanitation projects. We believe that Akvo RSR can be used in many other development aid scenarios, in areas such as education, health care, agriculture, etc.
Read more about the Akvo Platform.
Akvo RSR v 0.9.18 release notes
6 Aug 2010, (Code name: Supercharge) gvh
This release introduces page couters in Akvo RSR. We are also updating the version of Django that Akvo RSR runs on to 1.2.
New features
Page counters
In this first iteration page counters are created for projects, project updates and widgets showing one project. The counters record how many visits to a particular project have been made. However we are still only gathering the page count data for these objects, it is not shown in the interface. This will be added in a later release.
Django 1.2
Akvo RSR now runs on Django version 1.2. The new version of Django required changes to forms handling. The changes should be backwards compatible however and we have not introduced any new features requiring 1.2 yet.
Pip requirements
We use pip whenever possible for installing python libaries. We have added scripts/deployment/pip-requirements.txt describing all python components needed to run Akvo RSR. We use this together with virtualenv to set up our environment. While not technically necessary to run Akvo RSR it is warmly recommended.
Note: On Ubuntu you may need developer versions of certain python bindings: we had to
sudo aptitude install libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libmysqlclient-dev
to get lxml and MySQL-python to install. Similar upgrades may be needed on other *nixes.
Akvo RSR v 0.9.17 release notes
11 May 2010, (Code name: Bolero) bw
This release implements a new feature on the Akvo home page whereby selected updates appear as Staff picks. Ongoing work with Walking for Water is also now highlighted on the home page.
New features
New Staff picks-featured updates on the Akvo home page
The home page now displays 3 of the most recent updates with images. These updates are selected from a pool of updates Akvo has chosen to feature.
Walking for Water box now on home page.
Links in this box now provide entry to latest blog entries and projects connected to Walking for Water.
Bug fixes
Text overflow in widgets under certain types of browsers.
Bugs relating to certain layout issues for widgets in Opera and similar browser have been fixed.
Internet Explorer problems on RSR pages
These problems were traced back to the use of Javascript to open the Help & Support link.
Reformatting layout on pages with donor names to accommodate longer names.
Long names were breaking oddly. This fix attemptes to address that issue.
Akvo RSR v 0.9.16 release notes
13 April 2010, (Code name: Performance) tbp
This is primarily an initial release of page fragment caching and an Akvo RSR API beta test.
We also implemented caching for the Akvo blog. While not directly affecting Akvo RSR, this does significantly improve performance of the Akvo home page, which fetches RSS feeds from the Akvo blog.
New features
Caching
Caching for page fragments has been implemented in this release. Whole pages cannot be cached, as that type of implementation conflicts with the i18n language machinery in Django: essentially every user would run a separate customised session, and no user would encounter the same cache information as another. We have only implemented caching for certain heavy or higher traffic pages, such as project listings. The cache timeout is 5 minutes: if the last request for a page is more than 5 minutes ago then your request will regenerate it.
A more detailed discussion about the cache implementation can be found here: http://akvo.org/labs/index.php/CachinginRSR
Akvo RSR API - beta test
A beta test of the Akvo RSR API has been released. The API can publish information about projects and updates using either XML or JSON.
Basic information about how the API works can be found in the Akvo Labs wiki. http://www.akvo.org/labs/index.php/AkvoRSRAPI
Before writing applications using the Akvo RSR API, please read the Code of Conduct. http://www.akvo.org/web/akvo-rsr-api-code-of-conduct
Individual donor list
Individual donors using PayPal or IDEAL to donate money to a project in Akvo RSR are now listed with the amount they donated. If the donor elected to remain anonymous, the donation will be listed as such. An example can be seen here: http://www.akvo.org/rsr/project/64/funding/
Help and Support widget link
A link to the new Akvo help and support system has been placed on the home page and on all Akvo RSR pages. The link brings up a widget, at the top of the page, with a search tool and discussion starter. The help and support system can be found here: http://help.akvo.org/
Bug fixes
Comments broken
The way we handle URLs for Post forms changed. This meant the old URL for a comment ending "comment" didn't handle the new URL ending "comments/" properly. Fixed through the use of URL tags.
Internet Explorer and IDEAL
Some Internet Explorer users had the Donate button greyed out (inaccessible) due to incorrect loading order of the Javascript guaring against duplicate donations. We disabled the Javascript, as we have protection against double donations through the "stale invoice" feature.
Project comments broken
Project comments couldn't be made. The form's action URL has become invalid after a change in urls.py.
Akvo RSR v 0.9.15 release notes
5 March 2010, (Code name: Avonmouth) tbp
Adding one more custom sponsor portal page. The first one was introduced in 0.9.12, this one is for Walking for Water.
New features
New custom sponsor portal page
Sponsor portal page, a page which is different from the organisation page, but has branding and a project list related to the sponsor
The new sponsor functionality is possible to enable or disable in the settings.py file, as well as identifying with organisation number is the sponsor partner which the features will be linked to. This is still considered experimental and we want to generalise this feature so you can set up these type of portals from the admin user interface.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/2396373
README.md
Added a README.md file which displays nicely on the project page on Github.
Akvo RSR v 0.9.14 release notes
29 January 2010, (Code name: Firebrand) pb
This release introduces support for donations via the iDEAL payment system for users in the Netherlands as well as a number of architectural changes.
New features
iDEAL payment system
The donation subsystem has been extended to support donations via the Dutch iDEAL online payment system. Akvo RSR provides this functionality by interfacing with the APIs provided by Mollie.nl.
Code namespace changes
Providing an additional payment system resulted in a fair number of architectural changes behind the scenes.
Move to virtual Python environment
Akvo RSR is now installed into and run from a Python virtual environment (or "virtualenv") separate from the system Python installation. This is achieved using the tools pip and virtualenv. The advantages of this pip/virtualenv setup are increased deployment flexibility and standardisation of software requirements for each release.
"All updates" RSS Feed
An RSS feed for updates from all Akvo projects has been set up at http://www.akvo.org/rsr/rss/all-updates. Further RSS features are in the works.
Image thumbnails refactor.
Further refinements have been made to the way RSR handles the various image types (project, update, organisation logos, maps), creating appropriately-sized thumbnails, and cases where images do not exist.
HTTP Referrer
Support for capturing HTTP referrer information has been added to parts of RSR for use in future planned RSR reporting tools.
Admin help text
Further improvements to help text in the RSR Administration tools for organisations.
Akvo RSR v 0.9.13 release notes
2 November 2009, (Code name: Anakim) kad
This is primarily a bug fix release, and some minor new features.
New features
Partners entry on sitewide toolbar
Added a "Partners" entry to the toolbar (site wide). Linked the "Partners" entry to
/web/partners
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1321046
The top akvo logo is a link to the front page
it now links to the front page from all subsystems.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1289374
Replaced the main Akvo logo
The logo now have the new tagline "See it happen"
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1543983
Changed the page title on the front page to "Akvo.org - See it happen"
Updated with our new tagline.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1579950
Add Management costs to Funding budget item
Added 'Management cost' to the Budget item ITEM_CHOICES tuple.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1407959
The version of Django that is running is visible in the source
One can now in the front page source see which version of Django that is runnig. e.g. "«!--
Akvo RSR runs on Django, version: Django/1.1.1 (http://www.djangoproject.com) --»".
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1464719
Humanised funding boxes.
Currently only the funding aggregates are humanised. This needs to be extended across the
system to all areas where currency amounts are displayed.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1469524
Organisation project count needed cancelled projects
In the organisation activities the projects count does now have a line for cancelled
projects making for an non incorrect sum if the org is associated with a cancelled project.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/817414
Organisation listing widget for internal use
Created an "Organisation listing" widget for internal use only. This widget is used on the
Partners page in Drupal.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1321040
Moved the page tools up on the partner pages
To make the get a widget link more apparent, we moved the page tools section up.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1543990
Script cleaning out old images
The script removes old images from Organisation, Project and ProjectUpdate and renames any
that haven't been renamed properly. (See also bug
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1510571)
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1510576
void_invoice() view function needs conditional redirect.
The void_invoice() view function now have the keyword redirect=False set in its signature
which is then used to determine where it will redirect to.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1458419
Hide "Action" menu in user list for Organisation admins
As they couldn't delete users anyway.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/616357
User attribute on UserProfile is now a OneToOneField.
Changed the relationship between the UserProfile and User models. (No visible change)
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1480363
Bug fixes
Donation page displayed error message while loading
Switched from using JavaScript's hide function to use the "noscript" tag for warning about
no javascript.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1448535
Removed debug info when in production mode.
The debug info about context and sql queries was showned at the bottom of the source in all
RSR pages. This should only be visible when settings.DEBUG == True.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1468582
Own org could be deleted from project
A non-super-user could sneak past the checks that their own org is among the partners when
saving a project. This is accomplished by checking the delete check-box for the own org in
the partner inline form.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1424820
Uploaded images didn't get renamed
When uploading an image to an existing project or organisation the renaming of the image
didn't work. This was because of a change in how sorl.thumbnail handles images.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1510571
Prevented display of funding amounts less than 0 in templates.
Over-funded projects could result in the round filter displaying very confusing amounts such
as "€-0".
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1493650
Pledged sum in Org activities wrong with certain data
The calculation for how much a certain organisation has pledged totally was wrong when there
are mutliple projects to which the same amount has been pledged.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1460695
Saving userprofile may lock out user from admin
When a UserProfile is saved the staff status is set to false if neither org admin or org
project editor is true. This could lead to the possible lock out even if you are superuser.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1469655
In Akvo at a glance change Partners link to Project Partners
Direct link to the right page.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1573608
The breadcrum entry "home" at the blog pointed to "#"
The home link is pointing at "http://www.akvo.org/blog/", and not "#"
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/822234
Learn about Akvo link broken on sign-in page
The 'Learn about' how Akvo works link was broken on the sign-in page:
http://www.akvo.org/rsr/signin/?next=/rsr/projects/
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1514408
Proj.update/access denied page didn't give you a way back to the project page
Now get's linked to the current project page.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1229436
Cancelled projects had the wrong donation text
Cancelled projects still would say that you could fund them.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1528542
Cancel update on a project sends you back to top level RSR page
Cancel update on a project would send you back to top level RSR page instead of back to the
project detail page. https://bugs.launchpad.net/akvo.rsr/+bug/315228
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1229429
Sign in routine should not send you back to the completed registration page
Signing in from the completed registration page will send you to the front page. (lp:
315146)
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1229422
Set height and width to every image when using sorl
If a photo can't be loaded it should still occupy the same space. This is not true for logos
and other non photo sized images.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/1467668
Akvo RSR v 0.9.12 release notes
12 October 2009, (Code name: Basalt) tbp
New features
Addition of comprehensive help text in Akvo RSR admin
The add/modify project and organisation form in the Akvo RSR admin packs in a lot of information. Many of the fields are required and must be entered correctly. To make this form more usable, we added detailed and clear plain-English help text to guide partners through what is required of them.
Updated JQuery to 1.3.2
We now use the JQuery framework 1.3.2.
New small widget for Plus customers
A new "minimal" small widget has been created. With only project title, picture and location information. If you are using the Akvo.org services you have to have a Plus account (have an contract with Akvo Foundation) to get access to this new widget.
Listing of projects in other currencies
One can now list projects in other currencies than Euros. To be able to do this one needs to do the following:
- For other currencies than Euro and US Dollar, you need to modify CURRENCY_CHOICES in models.py.
- Create a new PayPal gateway. This can only be done by Superusers in the system. The new admin form for this is called "Paypal gateways".
- In the admin form "Project PayPal gateway configurations" you can select which donation gateway a selected project should use. This functionallity is only available to the Superuser of the system.
We have special code on the donation pages which displays different information based on which currency you have selected. This needs to be abstracted and entered into some admin forms for easier configuration. To change this you currently have to modify the donation templates.
The currency display ripples through the whole system including displaying multiple currencies in organisation listings, as well as the "Akvo at a glance" portlets, the "Organisation activities" portlet on the organisation page and the Sponsor portlet on the new Sponsor portal page. We updated how currencies are being displayed as well, for better readability. This work still needs another pass as we didn't have time to do it everywhere yet.
Read more about the Akvo RSR support for multiple currencies.
Added column in the admin view "Project PayPal gateway configurations" to display settings
This PayPal account a particular projects donations are linked to is important to know, without having to go into every project to see it. This is the one way money gets transferred through your system from donors to PayPal accounts, so you need to be able to see what they are set as.
Adding prototype sponsor features
In 0.9.7 we added a new type of partner, a sponsor partner. We are testing some new features for the sponsor partner type with this release. We are expecting these features to be fleshed out in one form or another with subsequent releases. These features are only applicable to one specific sponsor for now:
- Sponsor portal page, a page which is different from the organisation page, but has branding and a project list related to the sponsor
- Sponsor branding on the organisation page which has a link to the sponsor portal page
- Sponsor branding on donation pages which has a link ot the sponsor portal page
- Home page Sponsor box, which has a link to the Sponsor portal page and links to articles in the blog
The new sponsor functionality is possible to enable or disable in the settings.py file, as well as identifying with organisation number is the sponsor partner which the features will be linked to. This will be updated in the next few releases and should be considered experimental.
Added a link to updater's organisation in updates
In an update on the projects page you can now see which organisation the account which performed the update belongs to. The name of the organisation is displayed as the short name and has a link to the organisation page.
Bug fixes
"Hover" text (img title) not appearing over Focus area graphics on Organisation listing page
Launchpad bug reference 319407
Pivotal story
Partners' listings breadcrumb trail doesn't lead back to Organisation Listing
Launchpad bug reference 304679
Pivotal story
Sponsor attribution use wrong words in Widget, 2+ display
Donation template should not allow donations if a project is fully funded
One could manually go to the donation URL. The user will now be redirected to the project page.
Pivotal story
Image on donation page is not "sorled"
The project current image is not run through thumbnailing with sorl on the donation page, it is just a scaled original.
Pivotal story
Change text 'On hold' to 'Need funding' in Akvo at a Glance and Organisation detail page
'On hold' is misleading and should be changed to 'Need funding'. We had no projects on hold and there isn't even a status called on hold (anymore). Se Need funding was a better description.
Pivotal story
Clicking Cancel in donation templates should immediately void an invoice
When the user clicks on "Cancel", a new URL is called which triggers a view function which voids the invoice and redirects the user to the project's detail page, thus freeing up that sum of money so it can be donated again.
Pivotal story
Purpose of 'Back' button in PayPal checkout template is not clear and produces strange results
Workaround for now is to make 'Back' do the same as 'Cancel'.
Pivotal story
Funding partner logo too large on funding detail page
In the funding detail page the logo for the funding organisation does not seem to get scaled down. Logos now passed through sorl-thumbnail and scaled to no more than 140x140.
Pivotal story
Akvo RSR v 0.9.11 release notes
14 September 2009, (Code name: Jupiter) PB
New features
Decimalisation of financial data
All financial data in Akvo RSR is now stored in decimal format. Previously it was stored in integer (whole number) format. This transition was necessary to allow for accurate calculation and output of financial data in the system.
Reconciliation of PayPal donations
All individual donations made to projects in Akvo RSR are subject to processing fees applied by PayPal. Although Akvo RSR has always stored these fees, we were not able to apply them to our own financial data until the system was decimalised. We are now able to store the final amounts received from PayPal with cent accuracy.
PayPal gateway selection and multi-currency support
Currently all individual donations are sent to the Akvo PayPal account. As from this release, it is possible for a partner to request that Akvo staff override this behaviour on a project-by-project basis and define a new "gateway" (PayPal store) to direct payments to. Note: this is only done in exceptional cases at this point. PayPal gateways also contain locale and currency information meaning that we will be able to handle donations to a particular project in an alternative currency in the future.
Various enhancements to the PayPal donation engine
Several smaller enhancements have been made to the Akvo RSR PayPal engine:
- The findstaleinvoices.py cron script now logs detailed information for each invoice operated on
- The PayPal-specific settings in settings.py have been simplified
- The view code which handles the donation process has been simplified
Detailed technical information about these new features and enhancements can be found on Akvo Labs
Bugs
In one particular template, the message "Fully funded" did not appear when a project had reached its funding target. This has been fixed.
When a user attempted to donate a negative integer amount (for example "-10") to a project, the error message produced was misleading, asking her to donate an amount "greater then or equal to 0". Since it is not possible to donate 0 to a project, this message now asks the user to donate an amount "greater than or equal to 1".
Akvo RSR v 0.9.10 release notes
1 September 2009, (Code name: Avalanche) GvH
This is a small release featuring new widgets
New features
Co-branded widgets
The widget gallery has been considerably expanded with designs promoting the various partners for the projects and having new formats for use both horizontally and vertically on the host page.
Akvo RSR v 0.9.9 release notes
7 July 2009, (Code name: Torch) tbp
New features
New style to organisation activity box/portlet
When viewing an organisation page in Akvo RSR, a portlet to the right of the page displays how many projects the organisation is involved in, which partners it works with, etc. The presentation of this has been updated to correspond with presentation changes made in 0.9.7 to the "Akvo at a glance" portlet.
Akvo PayPal integration documentation
We have some initial documentation for the Akvo PayPal integration
Bugs
It is now no longer possible to donate to a cancelled project. The project remains visible in Akvo, but the donation box is no longer displayed.
Internal reference: http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/745352
Sponsor partners no longer have the "state" attribute displayed in the partner portlet on a project page. The sponsor partner information displayed there now matches that of other partner types.
Internal reference: http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/782930
Akvo RSR v 0.9.8 release notes
25 June 2009, (Code name: Utah) pb
New features
PayPal Enhancements
A number of improvements have been made to the PayPal donation subsystem of RSR.
More states for PayPal invoices
In previous releases, a PayPal invoice could be in one of two states: complete or incomplete. In this release, an invoice can be in one of four states: pending, void, complete or stale. This allows for more granular control over invoices and results in more accurate funding totals in the system.
Cron script to mark stale PayPal invoices
Stale invoices are identified and marked as such by a new script which can be run manually or from the system cron daemon (recommended). This script is designed to find invoices in the system which have been pending for longer than a given, configurable period of time, allowing them to be easily identified and operated on in the admin interface. For more information about this script, see http://akvo.org/labs/index.php/PayPalOverview#InvoiceManagement
User interface to void PayPal invoices
Batches of invoices can now be selected and operated on. This feature was designed to allow for easy manual voiding of batches of invoices which have been automatically marked as stale or that are pending and never likely to be completed. It will not allow invoices to be voided if they are either complete or already void. If the administrator attempts the latter, she will receive a warning message and a reason for each invoice in turn and no further action will be taken.
Display of funding of projects
Funding calculations displayed in the Akvo Marketplace donation box now only take completed invoices into account. Pending invoices are also included in the calculation when a user is about to make a donation to avoid conflicting messages if a project is close to being fully funded.
Bugs
Donations did not show immediately when a PayPal donation was being made. This bug was a result of the changes which were made to the donation calculations in 0.9.7.
Internal reference: http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/785964
Akvo RSR v 0.9.7 release notes
10 June 2009, (Code name: Omaha) eaw
Required software changes
New required software: django-10766
We have upgraded the version of Django which we use to rev. 10766. Our project budget code makes use of some admin features fixed in this Django version.
New features
New narrower "Project widget with donation"
A new widget with the same information as the previous tall "Project widget with donation" has been added. The new widget is narrower (172 pixels) wide, compared to its sister (202 pixels). Both widgets take up a maximum of 840 pixels vertically. Each may actually take up less, depending on the content of the project being displayed.
Both widgets are freely available for anyone to use.
Individual funder contribution displayed
The total amount of contributions from individual funders' (donors via Paypal) contribution is now listed under the funders portlet on the project page and on the funding details page.
Updated Akvo at a glance
The "Akvo at a glance" portlet on the Akvo home page and the projects listing page has been updated. Its simplified layout now shows correctly how many projects have been completed and how many people have water and sanitation as a result. Akvo at a glance now also includes the individual donations in the way it calculates funding for a project. The code has been restructured to make it easier to extend later. Bugs fixed: Launchpad #279243.
Favicon
A favicon.ico has been added to all Akvo RSR pages.
Project budgets
The project budget terminology has been updated to more accurately match its use. Previously this was called "Funding breakdown," but it really is designed to be a project budget.
The way the budget data is stored and manipulated has changed as well. Before we had a Django Funding model (i.e. database table); the model has been renamed BudgetItem. The date information (i.e. Date request posted, Date complete) has moved to the Project model; the money information is now stored in the BudgetItem model, and consists of one or more BudgetItem objects (records) instead of multiple columns.
Sponsor partner type
A new type of partner is now available. Sponsor partners, if one exists for a particular project, appear at the bottom of the partner portlet. This indicates functionality currently in the pipeline. More soon.
Featured projects
The projects featured on the projects listing page and on the Akvo.org home page now only show projects which need money. For the Akvo.org listing, this is only done if there are a minimum of 8 projects with outstanding funding requests.
Bugs
Error message style sheet
404 and 500 http errors did not have style sheets; now they do.
Funding table alignment
The funding table at the organisation page had a alignment bug making the sums pushed down a couple of pixels. This is now fixed.
Project updates widget is too large for the iframe
A new smart_truncate Django filter is used to increase control over text lengths in the widgets. Since text length is a general problem with widgets, we updated all widgets to use the new filter. Small changes have also been made around the Akvo reference number for better Internet Explorer compatibility. Filter by Adam & bobince (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/250357/smart-truncate-in-python).
Akvo at a glance
The updates to Akvo at a glance (described above) fix Launchpad bug #279243.
Miscellaneous
Donation page simplified
The donation page had a "Sign in" link for people with an Akvo RSR account. This has been removed, as it proved confusing; the 10 seconds saved by users with Akvo RSR accounts was not worth the confusion it caused.
Akvo RSR v 0.9.6 release notes
v0.9.6, 27 April 2009, (Code name: Sword) tbp
New required software: django-10553
We have upgraded the version of Django which we use to rev. 10553. There are some features in Django which has changed and will break Akvo RSR if you don't update to this version.
New features
New user roles
Two new user roles have been introduced: organisation project editor and organisation administrator
An organisation administrator can do the following:
- Create new projects
- Edit projects
- Edit the organisation page
- Activate new users attached to the organisation
- Promote new users to be project editor or organisation administrator
- Add countries to the country list
The organisation administrator get an email each time a new user signs up for an Akvo RSR account and selects the organisation administrator's organisation. In this email there is a clickable link directly to the user profile for the new user, where the user can be activated.
An organisation editor can do the following:
- Edit projects
- Add countries to the country list
Documentation about how to use the new features can be found in the Akvo Labs Wiki: Akvo HOWTOs
Miscellaneous
New home page layout
We have added a new box on the home page: Learn about Akvo.
Updated Dutch translation
The Dutch translation has been updated with some changes to the use of language.
Release notes
We are now coding the release notes in markdown, to make it easier to convert to an HTML page, as well as read in the raw text format.
Akvo RSR v 0.9.5 release notes
v0.9.5, 20 April 2009, (Code name: Juno) tbp
New required software: sorl-thumbnail.
For the image handling integration you now need the following software:sorl-thumbnail
New features
Akvo RSR image upload improvements
When uploading images to the Akvo RSR system there are now a number of improvements to how the system handle images.
- Images are scaled to the appropriate size the first time they are viewed. This is done via the sorl-thumbnail toolkit.
- Images are now renamed according to the use in the system. The naming is based on ModelNameinstance.pkFieldNameYYYY-MM-DDHH.MM.SS.ext. Example: a map image uploaded to project no 17 gets the name Project17map2009-04-1712.13.14.jpg.
- Images are stored in the subdirectory related to the project and the update. /var/www/akvo/db/project/NN/update/MM
Akvo RSR admin link
A link to the administration login can now be found on the footer of the page "Admin". (Note, that if you are on the non-RSR pages of the Akvo.org site, the Admin link leads to the Drupal system admin pages.)
Bugs
Fixed two bugs where the maxlength attribute was missing on the input field for photo_credit and photo_caption.
Limitations
See comments about limitations in the PayPal integration under release notes for 0.9.3.
Akvo RSR v 0.9.4 release notes
v0.9.4, 15 March 2009, tbp
New features
Added Dutch and German translations of Akvo RSR user interface for Widgets and Paypal donations. (Thanks Anke and Malte!)
Bugs
Fixed a bug where featured projects were not shown when looking at a project list from a specific organisation.
Akvo RSR v 0.9.3 release notes
v0.9.3, 12 March 2009, tbp
New required software: django-paypal.
For the PayPal integration you now need the following software:django-paypal
New features
Akvo RSR Widgets user interface
There is now a user interface to select and customize widgets. The tool can be found under Page tools on each project page. The widgets can be placed on any web site to promote a particular project or highlight progress.
Akvo RSR delegated project and user administration beta
We have started creating the ability for project owners to edit their own project descriptions and manage their own users. The tools are fairly basic so far, but it is a start.
Akvo Direct PayPal integration, using django-paypal
Support added for making donations to projects via PayPal Standard. Instances of a new PayPalInvoice class are created which capture details of the payment and track it all the way through to PayPal and back again. Invoices are "completed" and the end user is sent a confirmation email on receipt of a confirmation callback from PayPal.
Behaviour of PayPal donations can be defined by several environment variables in settings.py, making it straightforward to select currency, PayPal command flow, specify custom PayPal buttons and switch between sandbox settings for testing and production settings.
Limitations in PayPal integration
There are a couple of limitations with the PayPal integration at this point.
Donation committments
When performing a donation we committ a portion of the funding the project needs, to ensure that the project isn't overfunded. We currently have no routines to take down "stale" donations, i.e. donations which were never completed. This is a priority set of routines which will be created as soon as possible.
PayPal charges
Project funding is currently done as integers. This will have to change, as when donations come in from PayPal a certain percentage of the donation has been deducted from the donation. This very seldom is a whole number. We don't deduct this at this point from the project, which means that the project will always be short of some funds if donations have been made to it. This is a fairly large thing to fix, so due to deadlines we have punted this for a later release. Each transaction that is completed has a record of how much PayPal charged, so we can fix the accounting later.
Infrastructure
The way funding of a project was calculated has been changed. We have included the donations into the funding.
Bugs
Fixed a bug in the project-list widget. When you sorted on anything else than project name it was impossible to resort on project name.
Akvo RSR v 0.9.2 release notes
v0.9.2, 13 February 2009, tbp
New feature
Akvo RSR Widgets
Beta-release of the Akvo RSR Widget backend. This allows you to post iFrame based widgets of projects and project listings. A user interface should be added to the next release.
Akvo RSR v 0.9.1 release notes
v0.9.1, 6 February 2009, bw
New features
Django framework upgrade.
This version of Akvo RSR uses the latest Django framework, version 1.0.x. The new form-handling library, django.forms, was designed with extensibility and customization in mind, and will permit us to more quickly and easily develop RSR's administration user interface. To read more about Django 1.0.x please see:
http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/releases/1.0/
Parts of RSR have been rewritten to accomodate the frameworks upgrade. RSR should not look or behave any differently than it did in 0.90. If you experience anything new, please let us know so we can address problems!
Internationalization
Dutch translation files have been added. A big thanks to our Dutch translator, Anke van Lenteren, for helping us as we work out our translation process.
Miscellaneous
The wording of some text and error messages has been changed in the interest of greater clarity (and proper English). There are also some minor tweaks to style sheets to fix display glitches and layout irregularities across browsers.
Akvo RSR v 0.9 release notes
v0.9, 8 January 2009, tbp
New features
First public release
This is the first public release of Akvo RSR.
Internationalization for the user interface.
We have tagged all the user interface text, so that the Django translation engine can pick up the text strings and produce a translation file. While the interface is translated, some emails from the system remain in English; these will be fixed in a later release. We have tested the implementation with one initial language, German. You can participate and help translate the Akvo RSR user interface to your language by downloading the translation files from: https://translations.launchpad.net/akvo.rsr
Licensing
Inserted the GNU AGPL license in the distribution and tagged all the files with license information.
Akvo at a glance portlet
Field partners, Support partners and Funding partners are now linked to a listing showing only those partners (the feature existed before, but there were no links to it).
Project updates
Projects with no updates now have an RSS icon and a link (previously you had to wait for the first update for the icon and link to show up). So you can subscribe with an RSS reader to projects which have not been updated yet.
Bugs
We have changed how funders contributions are displayed in the Organisation activities portlet. Now only the funders proportion of a project is displayed (Bug 269400).
Highlights of bugs fixed
296702 Remove MDG count terminology Medium Fix Released
274658 Photos in Project Update have no default placement, so do not show up. Medium Fix Released
269400 Portlet: "Organisation activities" shows easy to miss-understand Funding pledged Medium Fix Released
269402 Organisation description box do not use line breaks. Medium Fix Released
274099 Partner types (example: funding partner) should be link to the URL which lists them Low Fix Released
279243 Actual number in Akvo at a glance portlet gives ugly linebreak Wishlist Fix Released
292932 Describe in user interface that user names are case-sensitive. Wishlist Fix Released
A detailed list (including in process development bugs) can be found at: http://snurl.com/9lqvk
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