The platform has undergone some significant improvements since the last release. This has led to the release of the newer version – 2.6. Both the Ushahidi platform and Crowdmap have been updated.

Some of the notable improvements include:

Improved way of handling translations

• Ushahidi translations are now managed through Transifex
• The Ushahidi-Localizations repo is now included in core through a sub-module
• All localizations will be shipped with core releases
• In addition, support for category translations have been added to the categories API
• For more on Localization, check out the wiki

Support for JSONP

• We have added JSONP support to the API to allow cross-domain interaction.

Zooming Controls

With an upgrade to openlayers 2.12, several cool things have been added:

• kinetic dragging
• animated panning
• zoom transitions
• Multiple layers now clickable: Improve use of SelectControl now means that KML layers, checkins and reports layers can all be made clickable at the same time.
• Also reduces the size of the OpenLayers.js build by over 100kb!

Better handling of reports layer

• Actions: The actions feature has had some more work done i.e.
• Added UI for editing an action
• Added UI for deleting an action
• Added actions trigger for geotagged feed items

Refactored JSON controller for easier extension: Increases code reuse and add the following events:

• ushahidi_filter.json_replace_markers
• ushahidi_filter.json_features
• More events in main view

Upload/Download of CSV

Reworked Upload and Download Feature. This now allows for:

• Upload of custom form fields
• Upload/download of Incident reporters
• Other tweaks include fixes to compatibility issues with CSV files generated by non UNIX systems and case insensitive issues.

PHP 5.4 support

The older version of Kohana the Ushahidi is built on isn’t compatible with PHP 5.4 due a PHP core bug. With this release we’ve update the Kohana core to workaround this issue and have Ushahidi back up and running on PHP 5.4. Much of this work was done by community member Yauhen Kharuzhy.

Most of the issues addressed above have been continuous asks from community members and therefore we hope this release will be of value to your deployments. Thank you for your patience and encouragement.

Upgrade today

For those running 2.5, you should get a prompt on your administrator dashboard asking you to upgrade. Just follow the upgrade instructions given to get to 2.6.

If you are running an version lower than 2.6, you might want to make sure you get to 2.5, these instructions to make it easy to upgrade.

About plugins:
We are putting the final touches on our core plugin compatibility testing. (Here is the plugin compatibility for 2.5. EDIT: The Full Updated Plugin Compatibility chart.

Download Ushahidi

As for new users, you can grab the new version from our Download page.

For any bugs or feature requests please submit them on our Github issues page, otherwise enjoy the awesomeness of 2.6.

Special thanks to John Etherton for his code fixes and constant diligence. Thanks to the community members for keeping Github ripe with input. We’re working on meeting your input. See the Platform Roadmap for more on how you can contribute.

Much appreciation to Sharon our own quality assurance lead on testing this release.