ThinkUp beta 9: Super-Fixit Happy-Developer Release

ThinkUp beta 9 is out!

Beta 9 is what we like to call a super-fixit happy-developer release. There aren't many new user features, but there are lots of fixes for common problems and several developer goodies. Read on for how to upgrade and the full list of what's fixed, added, and changed. Download it now!

Installation

If you're running ThinkUp beta 8 or earlier, here's how to upgrade:

1. Visit http://yourthinkupinstall/install/backup.php to back up your data before you begin.
2. Extract the thinkup zip file you downloaded over your existing installation's files on your web server.
3. Visit your ThinkUp installation and walk through the database updates. Big installation? If you have a large followers table (5M+ rows), beta 9's new database migrations may take a while to complete. To avoid web-based timeouts, you can run migrations at the command line by going to your install/cli/ folder, and running php upgrade.php.

If you're a developer running nightly code:

If you've already run the 3/6, 3/7, and 3/15 migrations by hand in the course of development, all you have to do is update the database version in your options table, then git pull thelatest master files. To do so, run the following SQL before you update your ThinkUp files:

UPDATE tu_options SET option_value='0.9' WHERE namespace='application_options' AND option_name='database_version';

If you've run some but not all of the DB migrations by hand, you can find them in the
install/sql/mysql_migrations/2011-03-11_v0.9.sql.migration file. Make sure they're all complete, then run the command above.

What's New & Changed

Twitter plugin

• Reduced Twitter API 502 errors. When you run beta 9, you'll see a greatly reduced number of red Twitter API 502 errors in your crawler log. Turns out that if you request 200 tweets per Twitter API call, it often times out and issues a 502. Beta 9 only requests 100 tweets per call--which requires more calls, but results in fewer errors. The number of tweets your ThinkUp installation retrieves per API call is now configurable in the Twitter plugin's Advanced Settings area (though it's not something you should have to change unless you're troubleshooting or developing). More info.
• Fixed Follower Count charts where there is missing data. If there's a gap in the follower count data (meaning, your crawler hasn't run every day the chart represents), those gaps are now reflected properly on the X-axis of the follower count graphs on the Main Dashboard as well as on the Follower Count page.

• Added Follower Count milestones. Wondering how long it will take to reach 1,000 followers? 5,000 followers? 100,0000 followers? Beta 9 adds a Follower count "next milestone" message that calculates how long it will take to reach the next level. Here's a screenshot of that in action:

• Corrected Retweet count ceiling at 100 RTs. Thanks to Amy, retweet counts are no longer capped at 100; if there are more than 100 retweets for a post, that's reflected in the UI.
• Resolved Twitter favorites crawler problem. If you have no favorites or Twitter is reporting an inaccurate number, the crawler handles that more gracefully.
• Fixed follower deactivation bug. If a follower account has been deactivated, ThinkUp's crawler doesn't count that as an error; rather it deactivates the relationship and moves on.

Facebook plugin

• Fixed broken Facebook avatar images
• Facebook plugin now pages back to capture all comments on a status update, doesn't just get 25

Expand URLs plugin

• Folded the Flickr Thumbnails plugin into the Expand URLs plugin. You now set your Flickr API key in the Expand URLs settings; the database migration for beta 9 takes care of that for you. Screenshot.

ThinkUp application

• Simplified the plugins listing. Before and after.
• Improved indexes on tu_follows table to speed up queries. Related mailing list thread.
• Fixed several broken/out-of-date links and bad markup throughout the app
• Fixed base URL calculation logic which generated undefined index errors
• Fixed Export to CSV file errors
• Improved email and URL validation
• Improved installation checks for the PHP and MySQL versions ThinkUp requires
• Password reset bugfix
• Corrected CSS file source order
• SlickGrid reply search is now embedded in-page on a post page
• Top 20 words now displays yes/no/maybe for polls. Screenshot:

Developer goodies

• The FixtureBuilder library now supports MySQL functions
• Tests are now completely PHP 5.2 compatible
• Fully deprecated and removed the Database class from tests, everything is PDO/FixtureBuilder-based
• Added test environment check which prevents devs from accidentally wiping their TU data
• Added nightly test runs to thinkupapp.com server with results emailed to the dev list

Thank you!

Beta 9 represents 58 commits by 13 authors (7 first-timers!) and contains a total of 3,638 passing tests, up more than 500 from beta 8. The complete version diff is on Github.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release in the form of mailing list messages, wiki updates, IRC tech support, bug reports, suggestions, and code contributions, especially Amy, Mark, Sam, and Trevor. Congratulations to sexyprout, TrevorBramble, JWFoxJr, lie2815, piyushmishra, shocm, and abraham for getting their first patches accepted into ThinkUp.

Let us know if you have any problems with the upgrade to beta 9.