Released on April 8, 2015
The Version 5.3 release of Wild Apricot consists of the following changes, enhancements, and bug fixes.
Significant changes
Pasting content from other sources
The process by which pasted content is cleaned up within the content editor has changed. Now, when pasting formatted text, the content editor will try to preserve as much of the formatting as possible, but will discard any incompatible formatting – formatting that it cannot reproduce itself. For example, some table formatting and text alignment options available in Microsoft Word may not be available in Wild Apricot's content editor, and will be discarded when pasting.
The previous process retained more formatting but resulted in messier and less stable HTML code that could cause the content editor to freeze or otherwise malfunction, and result in inconsistent behavior on different browsers.
Whether graphical images are pasted along with the text depends on the source from which you copied the content. When pasting from sources that store images using URLs – such as Google Docs, web pages, and emails – any images included in the content will get pasted. When pasting from other sources – such as Microsoft Word – images will be discarded.
To modify the settings of the pasted images, you cannot use the Settings dialog as you would when modifying a picture inserted directly through the content editor. Instead, you must click the HTML button within the content editor and modify the HTML code.
To accommodate those who might prefer the previous cleanup process, pasting formatted content is actually a two-step procedure, in which the content is pasted using the previous process then immediately replaced by content pasted using the new process. To take advantage of the old pasting process, you can either click the Revert cleaning option that appears...
...or click the Undo icon within the content editor toolbar.
Faster and easier duplication of events
The process of duplicating an event has been split off from that of creating an event, making it faster and easier to duplicate existing events.
You can now duplicate an event within the event list, simply by clicking the Duplicate button beside the event.
The new duplicate event will be saved as an admin-only event but will not be opened, allowing you to continue to make more copies of the event.
All event settings will be duplicated, other than event access permissions and the list of registrants.
You can also duplicate an event from its event details.
To create a new event from scratch, you now click the Create new event button from the events list.
More event email recipient options
Previously, when choosing the recipients for event announcements, you could select all contacts, or any combination of members, donors, registrants from past events, or all other contacts not already included in this list. Now, you can also choose specific membership levels, member groups, and saved searches.
Once you save the schedule by clicking the Schedule button within the dialog, the Schedule button for the announcement becomes Change schedule.
Clicking the Change schedule button allows you to modify or remove the email schedule.
Event emails for admin-only events
Since your contacts cannot register for admin-only events, scheduled event emails are now automatically disabled for admin-only events.
You can, however, send the email manually by clicking the Send now button for that announcement. You will be warned that your email recipients will be unable to register for the event.
Revised admin logo area options
A number of changes have been made to the options that appear within the logo area in the upper right corner of admin view.
- The Log out option in admin view has been moved to the Account menu, which itself has moved from beside the Support icon to beside the Public view option.
- Two new icons appear beside the Support icon in admin view: Knowledge and Community. Clicking the Knowledge option will take you to Wild Apricot's Knowledge Hub, where you can find information and resources for small organizations like yours. Clicking the Community icon will take you to Wild Apricot's membership community, where you can learn from your peers through expert webinars and Wild Apricot's membership advisory group.
- If there are new posts of note within the help site, or new articles within the knowledge base or the membership community, or if you have an unread support reply, a New flag will appear within the corresponding icon.
Once you click an icon with a New flag, the flag will disappear, until the next important post or article is published, or support reply is received. - If you hover over the Help icon while the New flag is being displayed, you can jump to the highlighted help topic.
Improved performance for member gadgets
We have improved the speed of member directory gadgets and featured member gadgets by switching to ElasticSearch, an open-source search server. We will be gradually implementing the search switchover within Wild Apricot sites, beginning with free accounts. In this way, we can gauge the impact and address any issues before rolling out the change to other accounts.
New features
Extra charge calculation field
A new field type is available for membership fields and event fields: extra charge calculation. The extra charge calculation field is similar to the multiple choice with extra charge field and the radio buttons with extra charge field, but allows you to specify a unit cost for multiple orders, or apply a percentage to charge dynamic fees based on some factor. For example, you might want to provide an option to purchase any number of t-shirts, or charge a variable membership or event fee based on organization size or income.
While setting up a calculated extra charge field, you choose whether to specify a unit cost – by entering the cost and selecting your currency from the dropdown...
...or apply a percentage by entering the percentage and selecting percent from the dropdown.
The multiplier you specify will be applied to the values entered by your visitor in the membership application form or event registration form.
If you specified a unit cost, you can also specify the minimum and maximum number of items your visitor can order.
Values below the minimum or above the maximum will not be accepted.
If you are applying a percentage, you can specify a minimum and maximum resulting charge.
Form values entered by your visitor that result in a charge below the minimum or above the maximum will be automatically adjusted to fit within the limits.
New fully responsive theme
Another fully responsive, mobile-friendly website theme has been added – Skyline. Though designed with real estate organizations in mind, Skyline themes can be used by any type of organization, particularly if you want to take advantage of its responsiveness and its theme-specific functionality.
Theme-specific functionality includes:
- Static background that doesn't move as visitors scroll up and down the page
- Dropdown log in box
- New donation goal styles
- New round featured member styles
- Secondary menu gadget
- Ability to hide the Remember me and Forgot password labels within log in form gadgets, and control whether the email and password labels appear within the entry fields, or outside them
- Font Awesome iconic font set for adding icons you can easily size and color
Bug fixes
Over 60 issues have been resolved, including the following:
- Special characters (‘ & < > “”) being displayed using HTML source code
- Issues with manually entering font size
- Script to turn off responsiveness for Whiteboard themes messed up menu background
- Calendar control unclickable on Chrome for some organization date formats
- In IE11, event description disappeared after editing event
- Email notice not sent when credit card declined
- Moneris payment not recorded in Wild Apricot
- Authorize.Net recurring payment charged a day early
- API returns wrong date for custom date fields
