New Features and Enhancements
Lithium Communities
- New Documentation Knowledge Base
- Improved Studio component groupings and descriptions
Video Demo
If you prefer, you can watch this video demo of the new 13.10 features and enhancements.
New documentation knowledge base
We’ve overhauled how we organize and distribute our Lithosphere product docs. Instead of pages of articles that link to long PDF guides, we’ve re-organized our docs into themed categories for easy browsing and converted most of our PDFs to targeted TKB articles.
Note: Over the next few days, you might notice a lot of activity on the documentation knowledge base, as we do some final cleanup and reorganization. Thank you for your patience.
For example, if you want to find information about using the @mentions feature, scroll down to Encouraging user participation and click @mentions:
By moving our documentation into TKBs, we gain several benefits:
- Less duplication
- Faster updates
- Crowdsourcing options
- Ability to link directly to content from Admin/Studio (coming soon)
Join the conversation: Another advantage of moving to TKB is that we can now work together to improve the docs. If you see an error or have a tip to share, let us know. Think we’re missing something or want to share tips and examples? Email us or write an article and nominate if to be added to the Doc KB.
For more information about the research we did before making these changes, a more detailed explanation of the improvements, and a glimpse into what’s on the horizon, check out this message from the Lithium Documentation Manager.
Improved Studio component groupings and descriptions
We’ve made several improvements to the Page tab in Studio.
Improved Component Descriptions – Hover over a component name and click its Info link to open the new component help pop-up. For each component you’ll find a description, a list of where you can use the component in the community, steps for how to configure the component in Community Admin, and a list of the pages currently using the component. Where possible, we have documented parameters that can be used in the XML tab.
Coming soon: New example screen shots for each component.
More Descriptive Component Names – We updated some of the component names in Studio so that they align with how the component displays in the community. We’ve also changed some of the component names in Studio so that they more accurately represent what the component does. In some cases, we needed to change the community facing text for a component. To help you map the new names to the old names, we’ve created a spreadsheet (attached below). For the changes that affect the text your community users see, we have listed the text keys and values so that you can override our changes back to the original state.
Intuitive Component Groups – We have rearranged the components into more logical groups based on how you’ll use and look for the components. The top section includes your customized material (custom components, content, and nestable custom pages). In the middle section, we’ve placed components into universal and functional groups such as search, page elements, and navigation. The bottom section groups the remaining components by feature.
Internal Components Removed – We have hidden a handful of components that are intended for internal use only. You should not be affected by these changes, but if you are, contact Customer Support. Removed components include: Common Link, Message List, Message List Panel, Ratings Detail Export Form, Ratings Display, and Review Rating Display.
You Found It. We Fixed It
- Previously, if you entered words to the Content Filter (Community Admin > Mod Tools > Content Filter) that included UTF-8 characters requiring 4 or more bytes, some words in your saved spam list would disappear. Now, when you try to add words with these “special” characters to the list, you’ll receive an error message. Words added to your Content Filter will no longer disappear. (Community)
- You can now send test emails using the General Subscription Notification and @Mentions email templates without receiving an error. (Community)
- When page errors occur while browsing community sites on a mobile device, the proper Mobile error page is now displayed instead of the desktop version. (Community)
- Terms added to the Spellcheck exception lists are no longer flagged as incorrect. (Community)
