Alongside Solidres 4.4.0, eleven add-ons and the Lumina template have new releases. Three more add-ons now install as Joomla packages, the Hub and the invoices take up the new tourist tax, iCal sync stops losing imported dates when a download fails, the Experience booking form is rewritten, and Lumina now works in right-to-left languages.
Three more add-ons become packages
iCal, Invoice and Channel Manager each used to be a plugin that quietly installed its scheduled task plugin. Joomla did not know the two belonged together, so the task plugin never received updates, and uninstalling the add-on left it behind. Like the Hub, Experience and Feedback before them, each is now one Joomla package that installs, updates and uninstalls as a unit.
| Package | What it contains |
|---|---|
| iCal 3.1.0 | The iCal plugin and its sync task plugin |
| Invoice 2.1.0 | The Invoice plugin and its balance reminder task plugin |
| Channel Manager 4.1.0 | The Channel Manager plugin and its sync task plugin |
Install a package over your current version and it takes over the plugins already there, with nothing to migrate. The Channel Manager package never switches a Channel Manager back on if you had turned it off, because an enabled Channel Manager sends every change to your live channels. Channel Manager 4.1.0 also accepts bookings that a channel bills in a currency other than the property’s, which it used to reject.
Tourist tax in the Hub and on invoices
- Hub 2.3.0: partners set up tourist taxes for their own properties from the partner dashboard, with the same options as the administrator: dated rates, age bands, night caps, VAT on the tax and taxes paid at the property. They also get the tourist tax report for their properties, with a CSV export. A partner only ever sees their own properties’ taxes.
- Invoice 2.1.0: the invoice PDFs, the PDF attached to the booking e-mail and the registration card list each tax under its own name, with its VAT row. A tax paid at the property stays in the invoice total but not in the amount due, so guests are no longer offered a Pay button, or a reminder, for money the desk will collect. The payment method surcharge is now included in the amount due on bookings with a tourist tax; it used to be dropped.
iCal 3.1.0: safer sync
This is the release to install first if you sync calendars with booking sites. Three bugs could reopen dates that were already sold elsewhere:
- The sync cleared a room type’s imported blocks before downloading its feeds, so a feed that failed to download left those dates open to double booking. Feeds are now downloaded first, and the old blocks are replaced only when every feed returned a calendar.
- Syncing one room type deleted the older imported blocks of every room type. Each sync now replaces only its own room type’s blocks.
- A feed or an uploaded .ics file that could not be read removed the old blocks and then failed. It now keeps them.
Also, one bad event no longer stops the rest of a feed, failures are logged, and command-line and web runs now title and clean up imported blocks the same way. The scheduled sync now also runs when it is started from the command line with scheduler:run, the usual way a server cron job runs Joomla’s scheduled tasks. It used to fail there.
Hub 2.3.0
- Distance slider: the “From city centre (km)” filter now works on phones and tablets, where dragging did nothing. It also works with the arrow keys and a screen reader, and the two ends can now meet. The same slider in the Experience Filter module works too.
- Partner dashboard: the Approve button carries a form token and approves a booking once. The reservation form’s fields are labelled and aligned, and it warns when no room is free for the chosen dates. The coupon start date opens one date picker, not two.
- Printing: search results, the Location Map module and the Property Types module print in light colours from a device in dark mode.
Experience 2.2.0
- Booking form: rewritten without jQuery. With the modern date picker, the calendar offers only the dates you can actually book: still to come, inside the booking window and not full. Before, a guest could pick a date that pricing then rejected. The first time slot with places left is selected, and a slow price reply can no longer overwrite a newer one.
- Extras: a labelled list with one row per extra. Clicking the name ticks it, mandatory extras are marked, and an extra that can be taken only once has no quantity list.
- Date of birth: a native date input, so guests type it or use their device’s picker instead of paging back through decades.
- E-mails: changing a tour booking’s status now sends the status e-mail and the feedback request, which were never sent before. The confirmation e-mail, the CSV export and the invoice of a deleted tour can read the stored tour details again.
- Guest accounts: registering an account while booking no longer stops the booking with an error.
- Available dates: with the modern date picker, the tour’s Available dates tab gets the same calendar as property availability. A switch chooses between marking days available and opening their pricing, so it works with a keyboard and on touch screens, and the range tools cover the whole From–To range.
- Experience Search module: one range picker for the from and to dates, like the other search modules.
Lumina 1.1.0
- Right-to-left: on a site in Arabic, Persian, Hebrew or another right-to-left language, the whole page is mirrored, including the Bootstrap parts of Solidres. Arrows point the reading direction. Left-to-right sites are unchanged.
- Brand colours on every preset: the Primary and Accent colours used to take effect only on Coastal. They now apply on every preset, in both light and dark mode, and links and buttons follow them.
- Heading font: works on every preset too, with a new Preset default option. The update moves existing sites to it, so no site changes its look.
- Printing: printed pages keep the brand as a letterhead, leave out menus, sidebars and buttons, and always print in the light theme.
- Phones and dark mode: the stacked search bar and the Hub’s Sort/Filter/Map buttons are tidied up, and the extras, price breakdown and availability calendar panels follow the dark mode toggle.
Smaller releases
| Release | What changed |
|---|---|
| Rate Plan 1.1.2 | The editor’s date pickers open on the current year, not around 3926, and start the week on your language’s first day. |
| Discount 1.0.2 | Installs on sites without the Experience plugin. The validity dates use Joomla’s calendar in the administrator and in the partner form. |
| Custom Field 2.0.1 | Date fields use Joomla’s calendar and accept any date, so they work for a date of birth. Country and state are drop-down lists on Joomla’s registration and profile forms. Experience guest fields list experience categories. Creating a Joomla user from the command line no longer fails. Now in 25 languages. |
| Housekeeping 2.0.2 | Updating from Housekeeping 1.0 no longer fails with a “Duplicate column name” database error. |
| Limit Booking 2.0.2 | An installer script prevents the “Class not found” error some sites saw after installing or updating. |
| Stream 2.0.3 | The same installer fix, tour status changes no longer logged against an unrelated property booking, and now in 25 languages. |
Security
Several of these releases carry security fixes, and we recommend updating:
- Hub partner lists: together with Solidres 4.4.0, Hub 2.3.0, Discount 1.0.2, Invoice 2.1.0, Housekeeping 2.0.2 and Limit Booking 2.0.2 stop a crafted link from showing one partner another partner’s records.
- Crafted links: the Hub’s distance filter no longer writes the value from the page address back into the page as it was sent, and the Experience booking form escapes the date it shows back to the guest.
Before you update
- Update Solidres first. Hub 2.3.0 and Invoice 2.1.0 need Solidres 4.4.0. The others run on 4.3.0, and Channel Manager on 4.2.0.
- Experience, Channel Manager and Stream go together. Experience 2.2.0 now tells other plugins when a tour booking changes status. Older versions of Channel Manager and Stream mistake that for a change to the property booking with the same number, so update them to 4.1.0 and 2.0.3 at the same time.
- Other requirements: the Hub and Experience need the Custom Field plugin; Experience and Invoice need the Solidres Dompdf Library. Importing iCal feeds needs the Limit Booking plugin.
- Template overrides: layouts changed in the Hub (partner navbar, reservation form, commission e-mail), Experience (booking form, Available dates, confirmation e-mail, voucher, Experience Search), Invoice (the PDFs and the guest’s invoice list) and Custom Field (the date field). The System page in Solidres 4.4.0 flags any override that needs updating.
- Custom Field: date fields no longer stop guests from picking today or a past date. If a date must be in the future, say so in the field’s description.
- Lumina: if you set a Primary or Accent colour on a preset other than Coastal, it takes effect now, so look over your site after updating.
How to get them
The Hub, Experience and Lumina update from the Joomla updater as usual. iCal, Invoice and Channel Manager are new packages: download each one from your solidres.com account once and install it over the version you have. From then on, they update from the Joomla updater too. Rate Plan, Discount, Custom Field, Housekeeping, Limit Booking and Stream are in your solidres.com account; install each over the version you have. The full changelog for each release ships with it.