Smoother, sturdier and easier to run
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26 min read
Core 1.3.28 · for your Fluent Community app
Smoother, sturdier, easier to run.
Core 1.3.28 doesn’t add a big new screen. It makes the app your members already use nicer to use and harder to knock over, and it gives you a page that tells you what’s wrong when the app can’t reach your site.
Everything new · four upgrades
What’s better in 1.3.28.
Videos play on the first tap
On Android, tapping a YouTube video used to load the player and stop there. Now one tap plays it.
Notifications open at the comment
Tap a comment notification and the reply is on screen, highlighted. No scrolling to find it.
Diagnostics shows you the fix
Open Tools and it checks what usually blocks an app, then links each problem to the place you fix it.
Sturdier underneath
The latest Expo SDK 58 with its fixes, and a dropped connection quietly tried again before members see an error.
Smoother · video on Android
Videos play on the first tap.
A member taps a YouTube video in your app, and it plays. On Android phones, that first tap used to load the player and stop, and members had to find YouTube’s own play button and tap again. Now one tap does it, the way it always worked on iPhone and iPad.
Why did it take two taps? YouTube’s player runs inside a small web page in the app, and the app tells it to play by sending it a message. On Android, that message landed in a spot the player wasn’t listening to, so the player loaded and then sat there waiting. Now the app sets up a small relay as the page opens, and it hands each message to the spot where the player listens. iPhone already delivered it to the right place, so nothing changes there.
Smoother · notifications
Notifications open at the comment.
Someone answers you. You tap the notification, and their reply is right there on screen, highlighted, in the middle of the conversation. No more opening the post at the top and scrolling down to find it.
It works for a comment on your post, a mention in a comment, a reaction to your comment, a reply, and a comment on a post you follow.
Behind the scenes, a comment’s notification now carries that comment’s ID. The app opens the post, finds the comment and lights it up, the same way the bell on your website does.
A notification also never opens out of sight now. If a sheet or the post box is still open, the app closes it first. If you’re halfway through an edit, it asks before it throws your changes away.
Easier to run · Tools › Diagnostics
Diagnostics finds what’s blocking your app.
When an app can’t reach its site, the cause is usually on the server: a Cloudflare challenge, a firewall rule, a page cache serving old answers. Diagnostics now looks for exactly those, the moment you open the Tools tab.
- Fluent Community is active, and which version.
- Your site addresses start with https://.
- App requests get through. The check sends one the way the app does, so a block from Cloudflare or a firewall shows up.
- Your site’s answers to the app aren’t being cached.
- The plugin is up to date.
Anything that isn’t green links to the place where you fix it. The old network test could pass on a site where the app was blocked, because firewalls let WordPress’s own requests through.
Sturdier · Expo SDK 58 and connections
Sturdier underneath.
Your members won’t see a new screen here. They’ll just see fewer things go wrong.
The app moves to Expo’s newest SDK 58 release (Expo is the toolkit the app is built on), with Sentry 8.32 and TanStack Query 5.105. What that brings:
- Expo’s fixes for iPhone and iPad, including running out of memory when a lot of data comes back at once.
- Sentry, the service that collects crash reports, uses less CPU on iPhone and fixes a leak in how it times network requests.
- Back after opening a link goes to the right tab.
- Apps that sell in the app get newer store libraries, and Google Play hands over a pending prepaid-plan purchase once it’s paid.
Connections got tougher too. Some hosts drop a connection just as Cloudflare reuses it, so now and then a request comes back with an error or nothing at all. Now, when the app is only reading (opening a screen, loading at startup, renewing the sign-in), it waits a moment and tries up to twice more before it shows an error. Anything that changes your site, like a post, a comment or a purchase, is never sent twice.
These packages carry native code, so this update needs a new app build.
Also in 1.3.28 · smaller fixes
And a few more.
For your members
- Long chats open at the newest message, and leaving a group takes you back to your messages. Better Messages
- Editing a post in the app keeps a video a moderator embedded on the website. Fluent Community
- Screen readers name chat reactions, a comment’s like button and its menu.
For you (site admins)
- A member who pays in the app and on your website for the same tag keeps access while either one is paid. FluentCRM
- A blocked member sees Subscribe only where paying can lift the block. FluentCRM
- A purchase that ends while Fluent Community is switched off is finished once it’s back on. Fluent Community
If you build your own app
- The dashboard asks before it replaces your Google Play key or deletes the purchase-check key.
- Submit finishes an App Store submission that Apple stopped at its last step.
- On the Google Play card, Find and Backup open Google Play’s release settings.
Core 1.3.28 · before you update
Three things to know.
- This one needs a new app build and a store update.
- Selling the same FluentCRM tag in the app and on your website? A tag you take off by hand comes back while the member still pays in the app. To shut them out, block them in Fluent Community.
- Paying in the app lifts a block only through a FluentCRM automation that unblocks a member when the plan’s tag is applied.