The comment plugin API for previous versions of Geeklog has been bothering me for a long time. There were some fundamental problems that prevented plugin authors from exercising full control over their comments. To correct these deficiencies and to hopefully make development of plugins using comments simpler, we've revamped the comment API making it more powerful and at the same time easier to use.

Below is a description of the new plugin comment engine and how to use it in the development of Geeklog plugins. Those unfamiliar with plugin development in Geeklog may first want to read Geeklog's Plugin Development Guide.

Geeklog 1.4 introduces a new feature “Remote Authentication”. The motivation behind this core feature is simple: Users do not want to sign up at every site they visit to post a comment, and site administrators do not want to allow anonymous comments due to spam and other factors. Remote Authentication solves this problem by allowing people to login to your Geeklog site with their login credentials for another, established service.

Firstly, a caveat to users, the Remote Authentication feature in Geeklog requires you to expose your password for the remote service when logging in. An unscrupulous systems administrator could modify the code to capture your password. Do not use this feature on sites you do not trust!

Remote Authentication ships with support for LiveJournal.com and Blogger.com accounts. When correctly configured the Remote Authentication system will allow registered LiveJournal or Blogger users to login with their remote account to your Geeklog instance. This feature is disabled by default, to enable it you must set the $_CONF['remoteauthentication'] variable to true in your config.php file, and disable user submission (set $_CONF['usersubmission'] to 0).

When enabled, each login form will include a drop down box of supported login services. The default option is your Geeklog site, listed with the text from your site name configuration from config.php ($_CONF[‘site_name’]). You can add or remove sites used for authentication simply by adding and removing authentication classes from $_CONF[‘path_system’]/classes/authentication. For example; to disable LiveJournal support, delete the LiveJournal.auth.class.php file.

Since this is one of the biggest updates in Geeklog's history, we made a last-minute decision to call it Geeklog 1.4.0 (instead of 1.3.12). After almost one year in development, this update brings you the following new features:

• Geeklog now officially works with register_globals = off. Please note, however, that some plugins and add-ons may still require it to be on.
• Support for Trackback, Pingback, and pinging weblog directories (blo.gs, Technorati, etc.).
• Remote authentication lets registered users of remote services such as Blogger.com and LiveJournal log into your Geeklog site without having to register (optionally, of course).
• The Admin sections have been revamped to provide a consistent look and sortable lists.
• Ships with FCKeditor (WYSIWYG editor).
  To enable, set $_CONF['advanced_editor'] = true; in your config.php.
• New syndication framework can both read and write feeds in RSS (0.9x and 2.0), RDF, and Atom (0.3 and 1.0) formats.
• New search only returns a specified amount of results per page, thus avoiding the embarrassing timeouts on large databases.
• The links and polls sections are now plugins, i.e can be disabled, removed, and replaced easily when you don't need them.
• ... and more ...

Due to the huge amount of changes in the code, we are releasing this beta version before we move on to release candidates (and the final release, eventually). Therefore, the usual warning: If your life, reputation, or income depends on your Geeklog site, don't upgrade just yet. However, we do need your help here and would like to encourage you to download Geeklog 1.4.0b1 and try it out. Please help us track down the (old and new) bugs in this new version.

The documentation still leaves something to be desired and will be updated step by step. We will also be publishing a few stories over the next couple of days, each focussing on one of the new features. And since our bugtracker is currently down, please use the official 1.4.0b1 bug thread in the forums instead.