Five months after starting the public beta and more than two years after starting the project, we’re happy to announce the release of the next major version, v0.4.

In the new version, we’ve added new features, added some changes, and fixed different bugs. Additionally, the user interface got a facelift in some areas.

To update your installation to this version, please use the update tool in the administration interface of mosparo.

New features

Project Wizard

A project wizard was added to the backend. After creating a new project, the user will be redirected to the wizard. In the wizard, the user can configure the design of the mosparo box, enable the security features, and find all the needed information to connect the website with mosparo.

Dark theme

The dark theme was added to the mosparo interface. The administrator can set the theme for the complete installation, and every user can configure the theme for the account. With the addition of the dark theme, we had to replace all illustrations since they didn’t fit the dark background colors.

Additionally, the mosparo website now has a dark version as well. The client’s settings define the active theme of the website.

Simple design mode

We’ve added a simple design mode to make it easier to design the mosparo box. The simple design mode will be used for a new project by default. The user can switch to the advanced mode anytime and configure all the colors as before.

With the simple design mode, the user has to define only the website’s three most important colors: background, foreground, and accent color.

With these two design modes, it is much easier to design the box for everybody and still be able to adjust every color independently.

Customize the text in the frontend box

With the new version, it is possible to adjust the text in the frontend box. To adjust these texts, the website owner needs some experience to code since these texts must be adjusted in the website’s code. For example, to adjust the text on a WordPress website, a filter must be used to adjust it. But with the newly added option, it is possible to customize the mosparo box even further.

Dashboard redesign

We’ve taken some time and redesigned the dashboard. The dashboard shows you how many submissions are stored and how many rules and rulesets the project contains.

Filter for the submissions

The list of submissions received a small filter. With the filter, the user can see only spam or valid submissions. This makes it easier to find the submissions, especially when a site gets a lot of submissions.

Update check

mosparo will now automatically check if a new version of mosparo is available. If that’s the case, the administrator will see a notification in the header of the mosparo interface.

Check for the correct connection to the internet

Depending on the setup of a web hosting, the connection to the internet can be blocked for mosparo. We’ve added the required checks to display a hint to the user if a connection issue is detected.

Configuration interface for reverse proxies

Some special configurations are required if mosparo is set up behind a reverse proxy. To make them easier, we’ve added an interface in the administration where the administrator can configure the required settings.

Changes

Required PHP version

To install and use mosparo on web hosting, the minimum required version of PHP is now 8.1.10. The update process was adopted to check for the requirements before the update is possible.

Security Feature IP Lockout

The security feature “IP Lockout” was adjusted. Before v0.4, the IP lockout counted every request and blocked an IP after a specified number of requests. If you use mosparo in a form visible on every website page, for example, in the footer, then the maximum allowed requests are reached very fast. The security feature now counts only the submissions which an IP address makes. After the maximum of allowed submissions, the IP address is blocked.

Fixed the CSP header on the design settings page

Because of the color picker on the design settings page, we were required to add a special CSP hack and use `unsafe-inline`. We’ve replaced the color picker and removed this special hack from the design settings page.

Bug fixes

We’ve detected and fixed multiple bugs while developing the new version. One of the most important ones is the one described below.

Spam submission gets deleted too early

Because of a bug in the automatic cleanup process, all spam submissions got deleted after one day instead of 14 days. The bug was fixed, and future spam submissions will get deleted after 14 days.

Roadmap

We’re already planning the next major version. We plan to release the next major version, v1.0, sometime in July. With this release, we plan to end our public beta phase.

Thank you

We thank all of our contributors and testers for their work. We could not do such a project without your support and contributions!

As always, we’re looking forward to your feedback. You can send it to us by email (feedback@mosparo.io). You can also post a review on Product Hunt, AlternativeTo, or WordPress.org (for our WordPress plugin).

If you have any suggestions to enhance or optimize mosparo, you can send these to us by creating a post in the Discussions on GitHub.