Database performance improvements and various bug fixes, 25th July 2023.

• Significant database performance improvements (PRs from @pupi1985)
• Other miscellaneous performance improvements.
• Avoid SMTP credentials in Admin area from being autofilled (PR #972 from @pupi1985).
• Allow pagination of element lists that exceed QA_MAX_LIMIT_START (PR #932 from @pupi1985).
• Handle image resource changes in PHP 8.
• Fix microdata error (PR #909 from @pupi1985).
• Switch to rawurlencode/rawurldecode functions (PR #966 from @pupi1985).
• Paginate special users page (PR #953 from @pupi1985).
• Invalidate cache when new answers/comments added (PR #949 from @pupi1985).

Fix various PHP notices/errors on PHP 8.1 and 8.2.

Note: if your server still uses PHP 5.x, you must use the provided zip file and not the master branch from the GitHub repo, as the repo now uses PHP 7 features.

Minor bug fixes:

• Prevent input fields being used in HTML posts.
• Fix various PHP notices/errors on PHP 7.4 and 8.0.
• Fix missing avatar with Wordpress integration.
• Use 404 instead of fatal error/stack trace for features unavailable with external user integration.

Miscellaneous bug fixes:

• Prevent parsing links in code blocks.
• Fix SnowFlat comment vote buttons.
• Improve compact number display.
• Improve delete cache performance.
• Prevent use of <style> tag (PR #740 from @alacn1).
• Remove database entries where deleted user was favorited (PR #754 from @jairlopez).
• Fix database overflow issue with many repeated words (PR #758 from @pupi1985).
• Fix mismatch between Q2A and PHPMailer email validation (PR #773 from @pupi1985).
• Fix some PHP notices on PHP 7.4.
• Add 404 response for empty tag page.

Security improvement and some bug fixes:

• Security fix: prevent use of <embed> and <object> tags (PR #807 by @gturri).
• Treat blob ids as strings due to size limitations (PR #735 by @pupi1985).
• Fix negative upvoteCount wrongly displayed (PR #738 by @pupi1985).
• Fix file input field causing problems on SnowFlat theme.
• Avoid magic quotes deprecation notice on PHP 7.4.
• Prevent duplicated vote events (PR #751 by @pupi1985).

Minor bugs fixes:

• Fix voting on follow-on question 'comments'.
• Fix selection of answers trying to close questions.
• Fix titles wrapping in SnowFlat theme.
• Fix cache trim function.
• Clear cache when posts are hidden.
• Fix minimum tags error when using only categories.
• Fix MySQL reserved keyword clash.

Several bug fixes:

• Fix closed questions by selected answer not displayed as closed
• Fix tag background color in Classic theme
• Fix 'no permissions' message in WYSIWYG editor upload
• Fix errors in structured data
• Add ^site_url parameter to email notifications
• Fix event logger issue with Unicode characters
• Fix searching/indexing in Thai language
• Add confirmation for email unsubscribe
• Fix plugin version comparison (when plugin version is later than official release)
• Fix Q2A version comparison (for pre-release versions e.g. 1.8.0-beta vs 1.8.0)
• Fix Ubuntu font in SnowFlat theme on Windows

Issues fixed since beta2:

• Fix missing function qa_get_gravatar_url when using Wordpress integration.
• Added total unanswered questions to Admin > Stats.
• Fix MySQL query errors when using SQL mode IGNORE_SPACE.

Main features in Q2A 1.8:

• Significant performance improvements
• Caching system
• Comment voting
• Enable/disable plugins
• Joomla integration
• Schema.org microdata

And many more! Full changelog here

Second beta of next major version. Changelog since beta1:

• Fixed errors with output buffering and gzip compression.
• Fixed non-ANSI group-by queries in MySQL 5.7.
• Fixed notices on PHP 7.2.
• Fixed points recalculation when converting answers to comments.
• Added generic .qa-post-content class to replace old .entry-content which was removed.
• Fixed non-unique cache keys.
• Reworked file cache to securely allow cache inside web root.
• Fixed issue with PHPMailer's autoloader on PHP 7.2.
• Removed (non-functional) clipboard from CKEditor.