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BlueSpice 3.0

BlueSpice 3.0 is a compehensive major release.

Point Releases

Release Date
3.0.0 17th October 2018
3.0.1 17th January 2019

Notable new features of 3.0

The most important changes coming with BlueSpice 3.0 at a glance.

Feature Description Screenshot
Search ElasticSearch now works under the hood as a new high-performance standard engine. With the new engine, BlueSpice users get many improvements
  • Autocomplete for search input now also displays similar articles
  • The new, revised SearchCenter offers a simpler display of search results without sacrificing features
  • Filtering search results has become more powerful and easier at the same time
  • Semantic metadata (from Semantic MediaWiki) can be filtered (facetted) in search results
  • Interesting search hits can be marked to improve future search queries.

More: BlueSpice switches over to Elasticsearch - Metadata the new challenges for wiki search engines

BlueSpice 3 Search Center.jpg
VisualEditor The Wikipedia editor is now also delivered with BlueSpice.

This means more comfort. Technologically, new possibilities open up and a long-term perspective for this tool.

  • Stable and sophisticated visual editor
  • New dialogs (e.g. for inserting links...)
  • Integrated handling of templates, footnotes, etc.
  • Integrated functions of BlueSpice (PasteImage, InsertMagic, ...)

More: About MediaWiki VisualEditor and simultaneous writing

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Social BlueSpice pro users now have completely new communication rooms! Articles and other contributions can now be discussed.

You can follow the discussions, keywords and filter them. And it's all searchable, too. In detail, Social contains:

  • Timeline: View all discussion posts at a glance. You can assign, recommend and follow these articles. Of course, all posts in the timeline can be filtered as desired.
  • Discussions: Hierarchical discussions about an article are now possible. The previous discussion page still exists - for material collections, for example.
  • Tasks: You can also mark discussions as closed ("Resolved").
  • Blog: Blog posts can be published quickly and more comfortably.
BlueSpice 3 Social.jpg
Responsive skin and user interface A new mobile skin (Calumma) makes BlueSpice usable from desktop to smartphone. In addition, we have redesigned the user interface:
  • Right navigation bar: It offers space for everything that has to do with quality assurance
  • Grafical Lists: The sidebars can be opened again and offer a lot of space and overview for functions, graphical elements and preview images.
BlueSpice 3 - Responsive Skin.jpg
Rights management The assignment of rights is considerably simplified. The wiki admins receive a standard selection of assignable roles that you can assign to users.
  • The tedious selection of over 100 individual rights for each roll is no longer necessary.
  • Simple, pre-configured roles: Reader, Editor, Admin, User, Bot.
  • Other roles and rights: It's still possible. Our technicians will be happy to set up the rights according to your wishes.
BlueSpice 3 Permission manager.jpg
Configuration Manager

Setting up the wiki with the new configuration manager is easier and clearer:

  • Filter functions by function category (e.g. skinning, quality assurance...), extension name or edition (e.g. BlueSpice pro Farm).
  • Search for settings.
BlueSpice 3 - Config manager.jpg
Frameworks and Refactoring BlueSpice 3 has been technical completely renewed
  • BlueSpice is now based on the current MediaWiki version 1.31 (long-term support version).
  • From now on the dialogs will be developed with Ext JS 6, which gives developers much better possibilities in dialog design.
  • In addition, the quality of the software was improved and further standardised in order to simplify further development and technical control of the system.

Some extensions were completely refactored for more stability and better integration:

  • WebDAV: Stabilisation
  • Notifications: More options, integration with Social

More: Code refactoring, Technical debt

Code Screenshot.jpg
New functionality Some more new extensions: BlueSpice 3 includes some additional enhancements
  • Semantic Scribunto
  • CodeEditor
  • TwoColConflict
  • Multiupload
  • FilterableTables
  • LDAP and SAML authentication
Replacements Replaced / no longer delivered extensions:
  • Replaced by Social:
    • Blog
    • Shoutbox
    • Rated Commons
  • Replaced by VisualEditor
    • Insertfile
    • InsertLink
    • BlueSpiceVisualeditor
    • ExtendedEditBar
    • FormattingHelp
  • Replaced by responsive Skin
    • Mobilefrontend
    • StateBar
  • ExtensionInfo
  • TopBarMenuCustomizer

Additional functionality since 3.0.1

Feature Changelog Description Screenshot
VisualEditor Switch between source mode and visual mode is now possible without saving Editors can now switch between visual editing and wikitext editing without having to save. This is useful if you want to check the wikitext or add some extra functionality which can only be provided in wikitext. mini
Privacy Center and Admin Allows users and site maintainers to manage their personalized data This feature gives the user control over their personalized data stored in BlueSpice. They can request anonymisation and account deletion. They also can retrieve all data stored about them. Also, this feature manages cookie and privacy policy consent.

On the admin side, anonymization and deletion requests can be managed. Also, privacy managers get an overview over which users have expressed their consent to cookie and privacy policy.

This feature covers essential requirements of the GDPR and makes it easier for site maintainers to be compliant with the regulation. The feature will be amended in forthcoming releases of BlueSpice to reflect all the best practices with regard to GDPR handling.

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Customizable Menu Adds a top menu to the site The top menu can be used to provide an additional menu. This can be a central navigation for the wiki as well as a list of links to other platforms used in the organisation. The menu is hierarchical and can have a predefined number of levels. mini
Flagged Revisions New overview list for revision status of pages With this list, quality managers can see the state of all pages under quality review. The list can be filtered for page names as well as for approval state. mini
Calumma Display of menus and featured actions depends on rights, not on logged in status In BlueSpice 3.0.0, some menus were dependent on the logged-in state of a user. Not logged in users, for example could not see the book list, even if they had the right to read. This is now fixed. mini
Added a backlink from discussion page to content page Users who navigate to a discussion page now have a link to get back to the original page without having to press the back button. This makes navigation between pages and their corresponding discussions easier.

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