Commons In A Box introduces the concept of CBOX “packages”, a mechanism for site owners to select, at the time of installation, the kind of community setup they’d like. As part of this release, we’re introducing the OpenLab package, a package focused on teaching and learning, based on the OpenLab at City Tech. For more information on the CBOX OpenLab package, see our announcement post, or our CBOX OpenLab documentation.
The set of plugins and theme previously known as Commons In A Box continues to be available as the Classic package.
Version 1.1.0 also contains accessibility improvements for the Classic theme; improved compatibility with updated versions of WordPress, BuddyPress, and PHP; and a number of plugin updates.
The Commons In A Box team is delighted to announce the public release of Commons In A Box OpenLab, a free open-source software platform for teaching, learning, and collaboration.
Commons In A Box OpenLab homepage
Over the past two years, we have partnered with the OpenLab team at New York City College of Technology, CUNY (City Tech) to develop a teaching-focused version of Commons In A Box modeled on City Tech’s OpenLab, an open digital platform that has served more than 27,000 members of the City Tech community since its launch in Fall 2011.
With today’s release, Commons In A Box (CBOX) now includes a choice of two packages: CBOX Classic and CBOX OpenLab.
CBOX Classic, the original version of our software, provides a flexible platform designed for communities of all kinds. It powers sites for hundreds of groups and organizations worldwide, who use it to create social networks where members can collaborate on projects, build communities, publish research, and create repositories of knowledge.
The new package, CBOX OpenLab, is specifically designed to support teaching, learning, and collaboration. Unlike closed online teaching systems, it allows members to share their work openly with one another and the world. Like a lab, it provides a space where students, faculty, and staff can work together, experiment, and innovate.
We believe CBOX OpenLab provides a powerful and flexible open alternative to costly proprietary educational platforms, enabling faculty and staff members, departments, and entire institutions to create and customize community spaces for open learning.
The creation of CBOX OpenLab was made possible by generous funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Office of Digital Humanities. The project seeks to enhance humanities education – and public understanding of humanities education – by enabling the work of students, and faculty, and staff to be more visible and connected to the outside world. It also seeks to deepen engagement between the digital humanities and pedagogy by incorporating software (plugins) developed by digital humanities practitioners.
“Humanities Commons is a trusted, nonprofit network where humanities scholars can create a professional profile, discuss common interests, develop new publications, and share their work. The Humanities Commons network is open to anyone.
Humanities Commons is a project of the office of scholarly communication at the Modern Language Association. Its development was generously funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Humanities Commons is based on the open-source Commons-in-a-Box project of the City University of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center and is an expansion of the MLA’s MLA Commons, which launched in January 2013. The founding partner societies of Humanities Commons are the Association for Jewish Studies; the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies; and the College Art Association. Each society has its own Commons hub.
Humanities Commons was designed by scholarly societies in the humanities to serve the needs of humanists as they engage in teaching and research that benefit the larger community. Unlike other social and academic communities, Humanities Commons is open-access, open-source, and nonprofit. It is focused on providing a space to discuss, share, and store cutting-edge research and innovative pedagogy—not on generating profits from users’ intellectual and personal data.
Commons In A Box 1.0.17 is now available! This release includes important updates to a number of plugins, including BuddyPress, BP Group Email Subscription, and BuddyPress Docs, as well as a number of under-the-hood compatibility fixes.
Update via your WordPress Dashboard, or read more about the update on wordpress.org. Questions or comments? Visit our Help & Support group.
Commons In A Box 1.0.16 is now available! This maintenance release includes a number of important plugin updates, including some security fixes. We’ve also included some security hardenings around potential vulnerabilities related to user file uploads.
Update Commons In A Box through your WordPress Dashboard, or download directly from https://wordpress.org/plugins/commons-in-a-box/. Don’t forget to run through the CBOX upgrade routine afterward, so that we can upgrade your plugins and theme.
Commons In A Box 1.0.15 is now available! This maintenance release features compatibility with BuddyPress 2.8, as well as a number of important theme fixes and plugin updates.
Update via your WordPress Dashboard, or download directly from our page on wordpress.org. Be sure to follow the Commons In A Box wizard to update plugins and themes after upgrading the main plugin.
Commons In A Box 1.0.12 is now available! This maintenance release features updated support for the latest versions of WordPress and BuddyPress, a number of important plugin updates, better support for using cbox-theme over SSL, and a number of other miscellaneous fixes.
Commons In A Box 1.0.11 is now available! This maintenance release includes compatibility with WordPress 4.3.x and BuddyPress 2.3.x, a number of important plugin updates, and some fixes for the display of profiles in the Commons In A Box theme.
Special thanks to volunteer contributors Amanda French, Chris Zarate, Jonathan Reeve for improvements included in the 1.0.11 release.
Commons In A Box 1.0.10 is now available! This maintenance release features full compatibility with WordPress 4.2.x and BuddyPress 2.2.x, in addition to a variety of miscellaneous improvements. A sampling:
Fixed a bug that might cause fatal errors on some bbPress setups
You can update Commons In A Box by visiting Dashboard > Plugins on your WordPress installation, or by downloading directly from the wordpress.org plugin repository. After updating, don’t forget to run through the Commons In A Box update routines, which will ensure that your plugins and theme are up to date.
The Commons In A Box team is pleased to announce the release of version 1.0.9. This maintenance release includes improved support for the latest versions of WordPress and BuddyPress, as well as a number of important plugin updates. We’ve also made some improvements to the bundled theme, including the rendering of header images in Chrome and overlapping sidebar/header elements in some browsers. A full changelog can be found at https://wordpress.org/plugins/commons-in-a-box/changelog/.
As always, we welcome your questions and feedback on Commons In A Box. Visit our community area to get started.
Download Commons In A Box 1.0.9 via wordpress.org or in your WordPress Dashboard.
