You can find all the details about the new version in this news post.

Important: One of the bug fixes could break the functionality of your form if you haven’t configured the project correctly. Read more about it in the news post with the changes or in the documentation.

This beta version (v1.2.0-beta.1) is not production-ready and should only be used for testing.

To test the version, download the beta version here or switch the update channel in your mosparo installation to “Beta” and search for updates.

If you find anything that looks weird or needs to be fixed, please create an issue on GitHub.

Thank you very much for your help with testing mosparo. We’re looking forward to your feedback on the new version.

The post First beta of v1.2 ready for testing appeared first on mosparo.

The two days

The first event occurred on the 20th of April, 2021, on a park bench between two villages in Switzerland. It was late afternoon, and the sun was setting in the background. We, Marc and Matthias, discussed different project ideas. One of these ideas was a very rough one for building a new CAPTCHA solution.

One day later, on the 21st of April, 2021, Matthias (zepich) wrote the concept for a project called “NoSpam”. Later that day, we discussed the concept in a phone call. On the same evening, the first domain was bought, and the project started to take shape.

Some more days later, the name “mosparo” was defined and the project was officially started.

The concept

The concept was written on the 21st of April 2021 and did not receive any adjustment since then. After settling on the name, we did not even update the project name in the concept. The concept describes the essential features and how the verification should generally work.

Of course, mosparo received many more features than we had in our minds three years ago. However, comparing the concept with the final software is interesting because we wrote the concept before we started to develop it and described the technical validation and verification process exactly how we developed it and how it’s still in the software today.

You can read the original concept here: Konzept Project NoSpam (PDF, 97 KB)
The concept is only available in German.

The rest is history

A half year after these two days in April 2021, mosparo was installed on the first website on the internet. It’s our test website for catching spam. Another year later, in August 2022, mosparo’s private beta started with more websites. And finally, another half year later, mosparo was officially released as a public beta.

Thank you for using and supporting mosparo!

If you want to help make mosparo better, you can find all information about contributions on our Contribution page. If you find an issue, please report it as an Issue on GitHub. Please let us know in the GitHub discussions if you have any questions or suggestions. We look forward to hearing from you!

The post Back in time: The start of mosparo appeared first on mosparo.

In recent weeks, “Access for all”, the Swiss foundation for technology adapted to people with disabilities, has tested the mosparo spam protection mechanism for compliance with WCAG 2.1 by the W3C.

Access for all confirms that mosparo is fully compliant with all success criteria at levels of conformance A and AA. To verify compliance, Access for all tested with different experts and different technologies and devices.

Since mosparo was built with accessibility and data privacy in mind, the mechanism of mosparo in the frontend is straightforward and, therefore, not a problem for assistance tools like screen readers and other accessibility tools.

Technical details

Access for all tested the visible and invisible modes of mosparo with version 1.1. We prepared an installation of mosparo and a demonstration form for Access for all. We’ve added some rules to test the spam and non-spam scenarios.

Some optimizations, which Access for all found while testing the mosparo spam protection, were already added with version v1.1.2, while some additional optimizations will be added with mosparo v1.2.

WCAG 2.1 AAA

We’re planning to go a step further and want to verify the compliance with the success criteria at the level of conformance AAA. We will inform you once we have more information about that project.

Accessibility Conformance Declaration

Accessibility conformance declaration WCAG 2.1 A and AA (PDF, 183 KB)

If you want to help make mosparo better, you can find all information about contributions on our Contribution page. If you find an issue, please report it as an Issue on GitHub. Please let us know in the GitHub discussions if you have any questions or suggestions. We look forward to hearing from you!

The post Compliance with WCAG 2.1 A and AA appeared first on mosparo.

Enough of the numbers. Last year was great, and we’re always happy to find mosparo on websites in the internet. We added many new features with the versions last year and also with the new version 1.1.

You can find all the details about version 1.1 in the post here: New Features & Changes in version 1.1

We’ve also prepared a small video to present the new features. You can watch the video on YouTube or Vimeo.

This year, we will continue with the development of mosparo. We have some ideas ready, and some users have given us ideas for new features. We’re always looking forward to seeing your ideas.

Thank you very much for your contributions. We’re thankful for all the ideas, bug reports, translations, and all the other feedback we get from our users.

We look forward to reading your issue, question, or idea on GitHub. You can also contact us by emailing feedback@mosparo.io or on all the possible social media platforms (see the website’s footer).

The post mosparo version 1.1 released appeared first on mosparo.

You can find all the details about the new version in this post.

This beta version (v1.1.0-beta.1) is not production-ready and should only be used for testing.

To test the version, download the beta version here or switch the update channel in your mosparo installation to “Beta” and search for updates.

If you find anything that looks weird or needs to be fixed, please create an issue on GitHub.

Thank you very much for your help with testing mosparo. We’re looking forward to your feedback on the new version.

The post First beta of v1.1 ready for testing appeared first on mosparo.

We got great feedback over the last months about the project and the software, so that we could develop mosparo in a very good direction. With version 1.0, we’ve added another round of new features, for example, the invisible mode. You can find an overview of all features and changes in version 1.0 in this post. Additionally, we prepared a video with the most significant changes. You can watch it on YouTube or Vimeo.

We additionally produced a video to explain the general functionality of mosparo. You can watch the video on YouTube or Vimeo.

We’re thankful for all the support, feedback, ideas, and kind words we got to hear from our contributors and fans over the last months.

We’re looking forward to reading your issue, question, or idea on GitHub or your Product Hunt review. You can also contact us by emailing feedback@mosparo.io or on all the possible social media platforms (see footer of the website).

The post mosparo releases version 1.0 and ends public beta appeared first on mosparo.

You can find all the new features and details about the new version in this post.

This version (v1.0.0-beta.1) is not production-ready and should only be used for testing.

To test the version, download the beta version here or switch the update channel in your mosparo installation to “Beta” and search for updates.

If you find anything that looks weird or needs to be fixed, please create an issue on GitHub.

Thank you very much for your help with testing mosparo. We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback on the new version.

The post First Beta of v1.0 ready for testing appeared first on mosparo.

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.

The post Version 0.4 released appeared first on mosparo.