Welcome Incredible Cobalt 8

We are happy to introduce Cobalt 8 - the great CCK for Joomla 3.0

We aimed to be recognised as the best CCK for Joomla, and we were working hard to provide you features like no one else provides. This may be long reading, but believe me it worth to read it all.

Audit Trail

Welcome to well tested new audit trail feature. This is set of new possibilities that makes Cobalt 8 enterprise ready. There are 2 main parts which are Audit Log and Versioning.

Audit Log

• Log important events.
• Set which events to log in every content type.
• See log filtered by section, event type, content type or record.
• Run different actions right from the log like rollback, compare, restore or others.

Versioning

If you enable versioning, Cobalt will make a snapshot of your record on every edit and increase it's version. It will remember unlimited number of versions. Here is what you can do with those stored versions.

• Rollback. Or I would even say - "switch" versions. Because if you have 10 versions and you rollback to version 5 you can always come back to version 10.
• Restore. Even if record is deleted we always have last snapshot. So we can restore record any time.
• Compare. If you want to the difference between 2 versions, you can easily compare current records with any given version. Because we were having in mind this versioning system when developed Cobalt 7 structure, now we have unique possibility easily compare every single element of the records.

Moderation

Because we have this big number of new actions, moderators features also have been advanced. Now you can allow moderators to:

• Access log
• Restore
• Compare
• Switch versions

And some new access rules for old actions like

• Post new records
• View, create sale or change its status

And cool category limit feature for moderators. Make moderators only in special category.

Notifications

Notification system has beed seriously advanced. There are 3 main among a lot of other small changes.

1. Notification Center - It is much easier to look through all your notifications now. You may filter by different parameters. You can delete groups of notifications like all new article notifications or notification of particular article and so on.

2. Notification Settings - This is one place, where you can manage your follows of all sections, categories and users.

3. Logic - We do not delete notification now when user access article full view. We only mark them read and they always stay in notification centre until you explicitly remove them.

4. Follows - Now you can follow not only section but category, or even user in personalised sections. To follow is very easy. You do not ned to go to options anymore. We have nice and convenient button on the same location everywhere.

Personalisation

This is something we did not put in to roadmap on purpose. We wanted to deliver something unexpected, new and outstanding. And that is exactly what we did with this advanced personalisation.

Cobalt is a first CCK which has allowed frontend submissions (in fact Cobalt is the first Joomla CCK at all). Since that time it is the best solution for getting articles to be submitted by users from frontend. Because it not only allows submissions, it also creates user personal home-pages within every section. User even can create own set of categories.

But we though those amazing and unique features are not enough.

New improved personalisation is aimed to complete socialisation scenarios like pinterest, histogram or twitter.

• Follow other users.
• Be followed.
• Post articles on homepage of others.
• Repost articles of others on you own homepage.
• Configure who can post on your homepage.
• We gave more power to user to control his section homepage. He can allow disallow to show his favourites, rated, commented, … He can change title and add intro text. And even change joomla template if allowed. Or allow/disallow others to post on his homepage.
• Get notifications when you are followed, your article reposted or somebody posted on your homepage.
• Change your homepage title and welcome text.
• Homepage style refactored so it looks much better and more personalised like real user homepage.
• Set Records Mode for personalised pages to show only articles posted on this homepage or plus all user's articles posted on other home-pages.

Another part of personalisation is CSL (Cobalt Socialisation Layer). This is set of events triggers and classes, that allow to integrate any social service or social extensions like JomSocial or Community Builder and let it work simultaneously. That means if you have CB, JS, AlphUerPoint, ActivityPro extensions installed and integrated, they all will get information on every Cobalt event not just one of those extensions.

All these together, including following JomSocial and Community Builder integrations, make Cobalt most social friendly CCK in the world.

Comments

Comments now work based on adapters. We found Cobalt core comments not very practical and in addition the trend is to move to social comments like Facebook Comments or DISQUS. That is why we created Comments interface for quick integration of any comment system. Right out of the box you immediately get following integrations.

• Cobalt core - old system but little bit improved
• JComment - Joomla extension

And for subscribers additional adapters are available.

• Cobalt content type - create special section and type to be used as comment, review or discussion.
• Facebook
• IntenceDebate
• DISQUS
• VKontakte

Formatters

You can export Cobalt articles or article to any format according to formatter plugin. Right now you immediately get formatter plugins to export to INI, XML and JSON and subscribers will get Joomla Update Service plugin.

Joomla Update Server

If you distribute Joomla extensions, Cobalt 8 is a complete solution for you. Not only you can create excellent download section where you can sell downloads or distribute them for free, but you can give your customers a choice to by individual file download or subscribe with Emerald and get access to whole list of downloads.

Joomla Update Service formatter will turn your download section into Joomla Update Service feed and will automate this process. Once configured, it will deliver new updated every time you upload new file to your site.

More than that, if download is paid, it will popup login form, and after login it will allow to download and update the file. ^Soon

There is nothing like this exists so far.

Other

Note this is only brief compilation of what have been done. There are many more features.

General

• jQuery - All JavaScript was rewritten to jQuery except few library scripts like mooupload, moomask, moodatapicker. But all inline JavaScript generated by Cobalt in now jQuery.
• Bootstrap - All templates was refactored and now works with bootstrap only. But finally they looks very neat. And they will looks neat on any bootstrap based template.
• Compare - Compare articles now works.
• Public users can edit - After submission public user gets alert with special edit link. He can save it for future editing. Also if there is an email field, it sends edit URL to that email.
• Tagging - Now more intuitive and better tagging flow. You can even restrict to add only existing tags like t is done on stackoverflow.

Plugins

• Glossary - advanced with new many parameters.
• Review/Discussions - added new category parameter to add discussions without {cobalt-discussions} placeholder.

Modules

• New Filters module. ^**

Fields

• All filters templates are refactored to bootstrap anв looks beautiful and more dynamic (use AJAX).
• Image - new way to add image with upload
• Multilevelselect - If only one value is allowed no need to click add button.

SEO

• Link tracking. You can see links like bookmark, follow, and other JavaScript links statistic.

Templates

• Compatibility mode - in the Cobalt global configuration, you can turn it on in templates where it looks broken. It loads all hessesary classes and javascripts. For example you use updated RocketThemes template for Joomla 3.0 but that one which was initialy released for Joomla 2.5.
• New timeline list template. Example here. ^**
• Menu and filters template is depreciated. Now parameters and code in markup template.
• All templates new parameter to exclude fields from the list.
• Other new parameters in templates and of course totally refactored for Bootstrap.

Other

• Save template settings for individual section, type, field or module.
• All autocomplete filters now work through AJAX and speedup page loading process.
• Records mode for RSS feed.

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^** - available only to subscribers