iCal + UI Ironing

Happy 2019! This is a quick and simple release that adds an iCal calendar 📆and irons out some UI experiences.

Contributors to this release:

@noragne (🎖First PRs to this project)
@gauravchl
@lpatmo
@distalx

Issue openers/contributors:

@stain88
@barrycarter

PR Reviewers:

@d3vild06
@lpatmo

Features:

• 📆 ICAL - Tired of continuously checking codebuddies.org/hangouts to remind yourself of all the upcoming live coding meetups folks in the community have scheduled? Import it into your Apple iCal by heading to https://codebuddies.org/i-cal-feed! If you want, you can also import the feed as a URL into your Google Calendar (👏@gauravchl in #1111)

@gauravchl also recorded this nifty 2-minute screencast of how this feature is supposed to work: https://youtu.be/bD10mGCIo7g

Enhancements/Fixes:

• 🍃 Make the "leave this group" button red, and delete a duplicated div (👏 @noragne in #1106 and #1101)
• 🎨CSS fix for study group card height (👏@lpatmo, @stain88 in #1098)
• 📖 Sort study groups on codebuddies.org/study-groups by "most recent activity" (👏 @lpatmo in #1108)
• 💬 Adjusted the Slack commands to populate codebuddies.org/learnings: type #til, #win, or #todayilearned (👏@lpatmo in #1113)
• Our codeship integration was broken because Codeship created a new app; @lpatmo and @distalx fixed.

=====================

👊 Go team.

Hope everyone is enjoying finally being able to DM each other on codebuddies.org!

The big (final) project we are working on now is CB Connect, which has its own repo: https://github.com/codebuddies/cb-connect

In case you missed it, last year we published a project status letter that defines our primary mission, goals, and challenges: https://medium.com/@codebuddiesmeet/codebuddies-in-2018-a-project-status-letter-to-the-community-7f8c2c34e950

SOME FEATURED PAST PRs:
[x] 24/7 Silent Hangout Room (👏 @lpatmo)
[x] DM/Inboxes on codebuddies.org
[x] An experimental Docker project to preview PRs - used to help review two PRs in this release (👏 @sebbel)
[x] Create new hangouts and share wins/learnings directly from Slack using the #til or #createhangout commands (👏 @gauravchl in #943)
[x] Buy Me A Coffee, Non-Profit you want to support, and Patreon links (👏@distalx)

NEXT UP:
[ ] CodeBuddies Connect (#876, https://github.com/codebuddies/cb-connect)

Feel free to file a Github issue if you see anything that you want to improve, or if you have an experimental idea you think can help improve the community experience.

Thank you to everyone for keeping this small community alive.

Final Release of 2018: Inbox and #til from Slack

Happy New Year, everyone! This is the last release of 2018, and includes some significant, meaningful new features.

Contributors to this release:

@distalx
@gauravchl
@railsstudent
@lpatmo

Features:

• 📬INBOX - users can now DM each other on codebuddies.org (👏@distalx in #1076)
  

• 💯Share #til messages and #createhangout directly from Slack (👏@railsstudent in #1083 for the integration with learnings, and 👏@gauravchl in #1084 for refactoring and the hashtag + /command support)
  

• 📚codebuddies.org/learnings page (👏@lpatmo in #1086)

Enhancements/Fixes:

• 🎨CSS Fix: "Today I Learned" UI now supports newline characters (👏@gauravchl in #1074)

• 👥 Active Online Users fix - can now see all users who are online again (👏@distalx in #1081)

=====================

👊 Go team.

In case you missed it, earlier this year we published a project status letter that defines our primary mission, goals, and challenges: https://medium.com/@codebuddiesmeet/codebuddies-in-2018-a-project-status-letter-to-the-community-7f8c2c34e950

SOME FEATURED PAST PRs:
[x] 24/7 Silent Hangout Room (👏 @lpatmo)
[x] An experimental Docker project to preview PRs - used to help review two PRs in this release (👏 @sebbel)
[x] Create new hangouts directly from Slack (👏 @gauravchl in #943)
[x] Buy Me A Coffee, Non-Profit you want to support, and Patreon links (👏@distalx)

NEXT UP:
[ ] CodeBuddies Connect (#876, https://github.com/codebuddies/cb-connect)

Feel free to file a Github issue if you see anything that you want to improve, or if you have an experimental idea you think can help improve the community experience.

Thank you to everyone for keeping this small community alive. Looking forward to 2019!

Release 1.2.1: Hacktoberfest 2018

This release featured quite a lot of user experience improvements, and we edged over 1000 pull requests for this project. 4 open Hacktoberfest hangouts happened on codebuddies.org/hangouts in October.

Contributors to this release (35):

@yoksanherlie
@akarshsingh9
@royjia
@Bobeta
@ahmadnurus
@lpatmo
@arturolei
@wrejcodes
@peoray
@Blasz
@JackHowa
@thunatos
@TomerPacific
@FrikanRw
@muthumalla
@thunatos
@vividh
@bgalek
@ekanshiag
@mendaomn
@AnnaDodson
@mahamshahid18
@joelmheim
@9jaswag
@NicBonetto
@MattKomorcec
@railsstudent
@adityatandon007
@vinmaster
@distalx
@codemzy
@LeomarAmiel
@ghost
@brylie
@billglover

First-time PR 🏅contributors to this project:

@yoksanherlie
@akarshsingh9
@royjia
@Bobeta
@ahmadnurus
@wrejcodes
@Blasz
@JackHowa
@TomerPacific
@FrikanRw
@muthumalla
@thunatos
@vividh
@bgalek
@ekanshiag
@mendaomn
@mahamshahid18
@joelmheim
@9jaswag
@NicBonetto
@MattKomorcec
@adityatandon007
@vinmaster
@codemzy
@LeomarAmiel
@ghost
@brylie

Thanks to everyone who helped triage, manage, or make PR review easier:

@wuworkshop
@stain88
@sebbel

Thanks to the PR reviewers:

@distalx
@lpatmo
@railsstudent
@peoray

In case you missed it, we published a project status letter that defines our primary mission, goals, and challenges this year: https://medium.com/@codebuddiesmeet/codebuddies-in-2018-a-project-status-letter-to-the-community-7f8c2c34e950

Features:

👋 Automatically send an email notification welcoming new user Signups to CB (👏 @joelmheim in #1015)

🎉 Automatically send a Slack invite to new users when they sign up for the CB site - Slack Invite API call (👏 @railsstudent in #1004)

⭐️ Highlight active groups on /studygroups page based on "Last Activity" (👏 @mahamshahid18; 👏 to @distalx for code review)

🐦 Add Twitter handle to learnings shared on twitter.com/codebuddiesmeet if user has twitter username saved in profile (👏 @vinmaster in #997)

✉️ Default email preferences when new user signs up. Also, add unsub link to email templates pointing to email management settings (👏 @railsstudent in #948)

☮️ Add three new fields to the user signup screen: "One-line intro of yourself", "Skills I can help others with," and "Skills I want to improve on." (👏 @AjayPoshak in #974)

🖊 Make "Skills I want to improve" and "Skills I can help others with" section on CB profile pages editable (👏 @NicBonetto in #1008)

📛 Allow users to edit their first and last name on profile page (👏 @brylie in #969)

🤖 We are now using Buddybot to flag messages in Slack that break the Code of Conduct (👏 @billglover created this bot over at https://github.com/billglover/buddybot)

Bug Fixes

🐞 Fix Slack hangout reminder template issue (👏 @yoksanherlie in #1067)

🐛 Remove unnecessary alert from clone hangout action (👏 @lpatmo in #1038)

👩‍🎨 Fix the loading screen when loading more hangouts on Hangouts page (👏 @AnnaDodson in #1017)

🐛 Hide # of participants banner on codebuddies.org/silent until fixed (👏 @AjayPoshak in #973)

Visual improvements

🎨 Add anchor link: https://codebuddies.org/slack#commercial (👏 @akarshsingh9 in #1066)

📺 Add screenshots to the codebuddies.org/welcome page (👏 @Bobeta in #1063)

🖊 Corrected grammar in alerts (👏 @arturolei in #1056)

✏️ Update CB homepage copy based on @wuworkshop suggestions (👏 @wrejocdes in #1055)

📜 Scroll to top of window when landing on /welcome page (👏 @Blasz in #1050)

⬇️ Red color for downvote arrow on learnings (👏 @TomerPacific in #1040)

👋 Redirect new user to welcome page after signup screen (👏 @FrikanRw in #1039)

🎨 Fix CSS issue related to page headers (👏 @bgalek in #1030)

✏️ Update the "welcome" content on welcome email and codebuddies.org/welcome page (👏 @ekanshiag in #1029)

🎨 CSS fixes to improve display of hangout cards on codebuddies.org/hangouts (👏 @mendaomn in #1018 after 👏 @mahamshahid18 in #1007, and 👏 @adityatandon007 in #999)

🐛 Fix black text on red button issue for admins (👏 @9jaswag in #1011)

🦋 Add a button to load more study groups (👏 @AnnaDodson in #1002)

📄 Give users a way to share a learning directly from their profile page (👏 @codemzy in #993)

🗑 Remove "I am working on" tab (deprecated b/c of deprecated package) from codebuddies.org/hangouts (👏 @LeomarAmiel in #992)

📃 Adjust page header CSS based on @julianjohannesen suggestions (👏 @ghost in #984)

Structural improvements

⛏ Add #mud channel to list of Slack notification channels (👏 @royjia in #1065)

👥 Add seeder content for "discussions" collection (👏 @ahmadnurus in #1060)

Finally support Github auth in sweetalert popup (👏 @lpatmo in #1058)

🔢 Update print width for configs based on @distalx suggestion (👏 @JackHowa in #1048)

📈 Migrate from sweetalert 1.x to sweetalert 2.x (👏 @thunatos in #1035 and #1043; thanks to @distalx for code review)

📞 Change Slack notification channel for test hangouts from localhost:3000 (👏 @vividh in #1031)

Documentation

📜 Improve the formatting and content of setup instructions for new contributors (👏 @arturolei; 👏 @peoray for reviewing)

👓 Add a "How to help review PRs" section to docs.codebuddies.org (👏 @peoray)

=====================

👊 Go team.

SOME FEATURED PAST WORK:
[x] 24/7 Silent Hangout Room
[x] An experimental Docker project to preview PRs - used to help review two PRs in this release (👏 @sebbel)
[x] Create new hangouts directly from Slack (👏 @gauravchl in #943)
[x] Buy Me A Coffee, Non-Profit you want to support, and Patreon links (👏 @distalx)

NEXT UP:

[ ] Ability for users to send each other messages on the site (inbox feature - IN PROGRESS by @distalx)
[ ] CodeBuddies Connect experiment (#876)
[ ] Redesign the home page and other main pages (#880)
[ ] Gamification Github issue

Feel free to file a Github issue if you see anything that you want to improve, or if you have an experimental idea you think can help improve the community experience.

Thank you everyone!

Release 1.2: Buy Me A Coffee, External Hangout Platform Support, Updated Slack Etiquette, #coworking alerts, and Forum

Contributors to this release:
@peoray
@sebbel
@praveeno
@sendmebiscuits
@billglover
@lpatmo
@distalx
@railsstudent
@gauravchl
@titchimoto
@d3vild06

First PR 🏅contributors:
@titchimoto
@praveeno
@sendmebiscuits

Thanks for design feedback or for filing/pointing out Github issues:
@wuworkshop
@julianjohannesen
@d3vild06
@stain88

In case you missed it, we published a project status letter that defines our primary mission, goals, and challenges this year: https://medium.com/@codebuddiesmeet/codebuddies-in-2018-a-project-status-letter-to-the-community-7f8c2c34e950

Features:

☕️ Users can set up BuyMeACoffee, Patreon, or "donate to non-profit" links that'll show up after a hangout they've organized has ended (👏 @distalx in #908)

📚 Archive full data (study group, discussion) after user deletes account (👏 @railsstudent in #915)

🎤 Testimonials about how CB has helped users added to the home page (👏 @titchimoto)

🎙 Launch of https://forum.codebuddies.org! Link added to nav. (👏 @d3vild06, @praveeno in #928)

📘 Update Slack Etiquette on https://codebuddies.org/slack

📺 External hangout platform: hangout organizers can input an alternate link to Jitsi (eg Google Hangout, YouTube Livestream, Zoom, Twitch, etc.) (👏 @lpatmo in #940)

📢 Alert the #coworking channel on Slack whenever someone joins the codebuddies.org/coworking 24/7 silent hangout to cowork (👏 @distalx in #947)

Bug Fixes

🐞 Fix Cannot read property 'username' of null error in Jitsi iframe (👏 @distalx in #900)

🐞 Fix: Make sure video is always muted by default when users join a hangout (:clap: @lpatmo in #904)

🔢 Fix: participant count (👏 @distalx in #906)

🐞 Fix hangout link issue (👏 @peoray in #933)

🐛 Fix hangout link discrepancy bug in 24/7 silent hangout (👏 @lpatmo in #935)

Structural improvements

📈 Display total # of learnings (👏@distalx in #874)

🌠 Fontawesome upgrade (👏 @railsstudent in #917)

📦 Update packages to fix app startup (👏 @gauravchl)

⬆️ Upgrade to Meteor 1.7 in preparation for file restructuring and vue.js migration (👏 @d3vild06)

🐳 Remove hooks for Docker build (👏 @sebbel)

=====================

👊 Go team.

[x] Global silent hangout page Github issue
[x] Global site numbers Github issue
[x] CSS fix on profile page Github issue
[x] Unsubscribe link to automated email reminders Github issue
[x] An experimental Docker project to preview PRs

NEXT UP:
[ ] Our own buddybot to replace plusplusbot, and option to flag messages in Slack that break the Code of Conduct (👏 @billglover in https://github.com/billglover/buddybot)
[ ] Create new hangouts directly from Slack (👏 @gauravchl in #943)
[ ] CodeBuddies Connect experiment (#876)
[ ] Redesign the home page and other main pages (#880)
[ ] Gamification Github issue
[ ] Ability for users to send each other messages on the site (inbox feature)

Feel free to file a Github issue if you see anything that you want to improve, or if you have an experimental idea you think can help improve the community experience.

Thank you everyone!

Release 1.12: 24/7 Space for silent productivity, Global site numbers, Email notification unsub link, GDPR compliance, CSS fixes, and Slack Event Change Updates

Contributors to this release:
@railsstudent
@distalx
@lpatmo
@nalbina
@aimeerpierce (first contribution!)
@bogdaaamn (first contribution!)
@ApCoder123 (first contribution!)

Thanks for design feedback or for filing/pointing out issues:
@stain88
@wuworkshop
@rmorabia
@billglover
@adachiu

In case you missed it, we also published a project status letter that defines our primary mission, goals, and challenges this year: https://medium.com/@codebuddiesmeet/codebuddies-in-2018-a-project-status-letter-to-the-community-7f8c2c34e950

Features:

🐦 24/7 Space for Silent Productivity - Focus better with silent coworking partners in a 24/7 hangout at codebuddies.org/silent (👏@lpatmo in #882)

🌐 GDPR compliance: Users can now download data from profile page, and there is an updated privacy agreement and opt-in checkbox (👏@lpatmo in #799; thanks to @distalx, @nalbina, and @billglover for thoughts/feedback)

🔔 Send notification to Slack channels when start date/time of hangout has changed (👏@railsstudent in #886; thanks to @rmorabia for raising up the issue)

📭 Add unsubscribe links to email notification templates: added support for unsub links to "new hangout," "new discussion", "new member" and "discussion thread" email notification templates (👏@distalx in #888, which is an auspicious number for the PR)

🐳 Build live links of PRs to the CodeBuddies repo with Jenkins - This is an experimental feature that lets anyone create a live codebuddies-x.now.sh URL based on a PR by firing up Jenkins and inputing the number of the PR submitted to the CB repo :) In the future, we can automate this by getting the deployment to run if a PR is tagged with a specific label, and sending the URL over to Slack from Jenkins. This'll save PR reviewers time, since they'll be able to see a demo immediately. (👏@nalbina for setting up https://github.com/codebuddies/jenkins)

🔢 Global site numbers on homepage - Counts of the number of hangouts organized, learnings reported, study groups, and discussions are now displayed prominently on the home page! (👏to @railsstudent for #856 and thanks to @distalx for the code review/feedback)

Bug Fixes

🎨 Fix CSS issues on profile page (👏@aimeerpierce for first contribution! And thanks to @stain88 for filing the issue)

🐞 Fix second "Get your Slack invite" button on the homepage by turning it into a link (👏@bogdaaamn in #869 for first contribution!)

🐞 Fix mixed content error with https vs. http in materialdesignicons.min.css (👏@ApCoder123 in #866 for first contribution!)

🐞 Global Silent Hangout mobile CSS fix, and default "guest" username fix when a user joins the hangout
(👏@lpatmo in #893 and #891; thanks to @wuworkshop for pointing out the mobile issues)

🔑 Study group unauthenticated user login prompt (👏@railsstudent in #864 for discovering and fixing this problem)

Structural improvements

👨‍💻Slight update to homepage text that links to our Open Collective and /about page and underlines that the project is non-profit (👏@lpatmo in #889)

📈 Added support for montiapm, a performance monitoring tool (👏@distalx in #874)

🐳 Enable docker containers for PRs, and for them to be built on Docker Cloud (👏@nalbina in #870 and #872)

=====================

👊 Go team.

Next up:

[x] Global silent hangout page Github issue
[x] Global site numbers Github issue
[x] CSS fix on profile page Github issue
[x] Unsubscribe link to automated email reminders Github issue
[x] An experimental Docker project to preview PRs

(Hey, we achieved a lot in this release!)

[ ] NEW: CodeBuddies Connect experiment (#876)
[ ] Redesign the home page and other main pages (#880)
[ ] Gamification Github issue
[ ] Ability for users to send each other messages on the site (inbox feature)

Feel free to file a Github issue if you see anything that you want to improve, or if you have an experimental idea you think can help improve the community experience.

Thank you everyone!

Release 1.1: squashing bugs

Contributors to this release:

@railsstudent
@distalx
@lpatmo
@nalbina
@dylanbobb (first PR)
@WinterCore (first PR to this project)
@piyushmittal25 (first PR)

Many thanks also to @rmorabia, @distalx, @railsstudent, @julianjohannesen (auto-tweet opt-out bug filed a while ago), and @stain88 for reporting/filing bugs.

Also check out the first Greetbot release led by @BethanyG, @stain88, and @angelocordon + many other contributors: https://github.com/codebuddies/greetbot/releases

A lot of bug fixes on the heels of our big 1.0 release!

Features:

🐦 Opt out of auto-tweeted learnings - You can now opt out of auto-tweeting your learnings when you share a learning (👏@railsstudent in #838)

Github signin link added to the home page (👏@railsstudent in #833)

Bug Fixes

🐞 Bug fix: owner of completed hangout can create a hangout from the same page (broken button)
(👏@railsstudent in #858)

🐞 Slack notifications fix: remove mentions of usernames in Slack notifications because of 1) Github login; 2) reported username glitch (👏@lpatmo in #855)

🐞 Bug fix: hide google calendar button in completed hangout (👏@railsstudent in #857)

🐞 Bug fix: long URLs in hangout descriptions would break popup container (👏@railsstudent in #804)

🐞 Bug fix: Add prettierignore file to solve problem of recurring package-lock.json merge conflicts due to prettier formatting (👏@distalx in #853)

🐞 Bug fix: Solve overflow problem for long URLs in discussion threads (👏@piyushmittal25 in #837)

🐞 Bug fix: expand completed hangout card height (👏@WinterCore in #820 )

🐞 Major bug fix: update acemtp:accounts-slack page to resolve alarming root login error when users logged in from a non-CB Slack account (👏@distalx in #819 )

Structural improvements

👨‍💻Upgraded our app from Meteor 1.4.x to Meteor 1.6! (👏@distalx in #842)
👨‍💻Upgraded Dockerfile for meteor 1.6! (👏@nalbina in #846)
👨‍💻CI improvements in package.json, .meteor/versions, and .meteor/packages! (👏@distalx in #845)
👨‍💻Add prettier, husky, and lint-staged to automatically apply standard formatting to PRs (👏@nalbina in #841)
👨‍💻Remove duplicated code in the Meteor.LoginWithSlack function (👏@railsstudent in #824)
👨‍💻Remove unused registerHelper(👏@dylanbobb in #827)

=====================

👊 Go team.
We still have only 1 issue left in our milestone 1.0 goals, we've launched the greetbot on Slack, and we've specced out two new experimental features that will help better connect the community (see: gamification and a global silent hangout page).

Next up:

• Global silent hangout page Github issue
• Gamification Github issue
• Global site numbers Github issue
• CSS fix on profile page Github issue
• Unsubscribe link to automated email reminders Github issue
• An experimental Docker project to preview PRs
• Redesign the home page
• Redesign the /hangouts sidebar

Feel free to file a Github issue if you see anything that you want to improve, or if you have an experimental idea you think can help improve the community experience.

Thank you everyone!

1.0 RELEASE: Discussion threads, Github login, Email notifications, Updated contributors' page, bug fixes, and more

Contributors to this release:

@railsstudent
@distalx
@lpatmo
@rmorabia
@nalbina
@BethanyG
@stain88
@angelocordon

A very exciting release!

5 Major features introduced to this release:

🗒 Discussions - you can now start discussion topics under each study group, and subscribe to email notifications about updates to the discussion threads. See a full list of discussions here: https://codebuddies.org/discussions. You can also browse discussions by their tags. (👏@distalx in #801)

⏭Join/Leave buttons on codebuddies.org/study-groups - you can now join/leave a study group much more easily, directly on the study groups page (👏@railsstudent in #796)

Login using Github, not just Slack - Logging into the website using Slack can be confusing, since we require that you have an account with codebuddies.slack.com. Now you can log in using Github! And we ask you to validate your username before you sign in. (👏@railsstudent + @distalx for #802 and @distalx for #811 )

✉️ Email notifications - Subscribers will be notified about the following events:

• new hangouts
  when user creates a hangout in a study group.
• new member
  when new members joins the group.
• new discussions
  when user creates a discussion in a study group.

User can set notification preferences in their account settings.
(👏@distalx in #801)

🤺Updated codebuddies.org/about contributors' page and README.md - belated updated list of contributors (following the example from postgresql.org/community/contributors/) and on the Github repo! (👏@lpatmo in #810)

Bug Fixes

🐞 Select2.css bug - fix for the "select up to 3 slack channels" message hidden on study group owners' settings
(👏@rmorabia in #798)

🐞 README.md typo fix
(👏@rmorabia in #797)

🐞 Bug fix: no announcement notification for hangouts scheduled under the CB default group (👏@railsstudent in #803)

🐞 Bug fix: long URLs in hangout descriptions would break popup container (👏@railsstudent in #804)

🐞 Bug fix: If hangout topic/description contained the ampersand character (&), the text was truncated before the first occurrence of &. (👏@railsstudent in #805)

Refactoring

✏️ Refactored settings-development.json to make it easier to update SMTP config settings (👏@distalx in #815)
✏️ Changed Slack signin permissions to minimize the amount of information we get from users logging in using Slack (since we don't need that much) (👏 @distalx in #814)

Features in progress:

⭐️ Docker project: Preview a PR on a live demo preview link without having to git checkout the branch - @nalbina noticed that it was often cumbersome for folks who wanted to help review PRs to have to go through git remote add some_name [github repo url], git fetch some_name, and then git checkout some_name/[branch_name]. What if every time a PR was submitted, there was a live demo link the reviewer could click on that would show the PR-version of the site? @nalbina has been experimenting with solving this challenge using the Docker Golang SDK and an API endpoint.

⭐️ Greetbot project: Lots of coding and refactoring by @BethanyG and @stain8 throughout February and March. @angelocordon took an extensive first pass at documentation at the Greetbot wiki at https://github.com/codebuddies/greetbot/wiki, which @stain88 and and @BethanyG have helped edit. @stain88 also threw up an initial test suite at codebuddies/greetbot#61 and has a PR for helping slack-md preview purposes at codebuddies/greetbot#64. @codeluggage plans on integrating animated code explainer GIFs with the project at some point. :D

⭐️ Greetbot /resources command: @BethanyG curated and finished the /resources javascript and /resources python commands and wrote up a guide for how to implement resources at https://github.com/codebuddies/greetbot/wiki/03-Adding-Resources,-and-Resource-Display-Templates, which @stain88 has helped edit. @nestevez7 and @rmorabia helped compile a master list of 4 beginner, 4 intermediate, and 4 advanced HTML/CSS resources at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ts2CIvD7zXPVuOJF69w3Y5gFgHQxKENPOWjZMsnYLJo/edit. @jonhnathanDOS and @FavoredFortune are working on implementing the /resources html-css Slack command. @tgmiller has expressed interest in compiling and implementing a /resources C# Slack command.

=====================

👊 Go team.
We have only 1 issue left in our milestone 1.0 goals.
https://github.com/codebuddies/codebuddies/milestone/1

Next up:

• Updating the /hangouts sidebar with a global activity feed -- and maybe a gamification element (!!) to applaud and encourage more hangout organizers. Feature still needs to be specced out; discuss here: #598

• Improvements to existing features

• Feel free to file a Github issue if you see anything that you want to improve!

Great work and massive thanks to the contributors!!

A good release: new welcome bot, automated Slack channel hangout notifications, improved email templates, and more

Contributors to this release:

@railsstudent
@RobGoelz (1st PR)
@nalbina
@distalx
@lpatmo
@xXSupernaturalBuilderXx (1st PR)
@julianjohannesen (1st PR)
@angelocordon
@wuworkshop
@BethanyG

Improvements introduced to this release:

• Documentation: updated coding style guidelines page at https://docs.codebuddies.org/contribution/coding_style.html (Thanks @RobGoelz!)
• Awesome new greeting bot now welcomes users 🥂. https://github.com/codebuddies/greetbot built by @BethanyG replaces Janitr. h/t @lpatmo and @distalx for assisting with deployment.
  
• Improved email templates ✉️: #786 (@xXSupernaturalBuilderXx and @lpatmo worked on this together)
• Exciting new feature by @railsstudent 🎆: study group owners can set up to three channels which will receive automated notifications whenever a new hangout is scheduled in that group #782.
• New codebuddies.org/welcome page created by @julianjohannesen 👋! Thanks to @angelocordon for reviewing, and to @angelocordon, @wuworkshop, and @BethanyG for writing up the copy. #778
• New study group owners' guide page at https://codebuddies.org/study-groups/owners-guide created by @angelocordon 📖! This will hopefully help study group organizers. #772
• Management of email preferences started by @distalx 👏 -- part of issue #626. #776
• CB is now dockerized thanks to @nalbina 📦! https://github.com/codebuddies/codebuddies/wiki/Dockerization. This will theoretically mean we can spin up demo instances of PRs in the future, so PR reviewers will be able to click on a URL instead of checking out a branch to see a feature. h/t @distalx for assisting with Codeship details.
• @nalbina got us the github.com/codebuddies org name after contacting Github support, @distalx renamed github.com/codebuddiesdotorg to github.com/codebuddies, and @railsstudent updated the names throughout the github.com/codebuddies/codebuddies repo to be codebuddies instead of codebuddiesdotorg. 👊 Go team.

We are now 44% complete with our milestone 1.0 goals for the end of February. https://github.com/codebuddies/codebuddies/milestone/1

Thank you everyone.

Upcoming (hopefully) in a future release:

• We'd love more help from new contributors to improve the documentation at docs.codebuddies.org
• More good-for-beginner issues for new contributors
• Enhanced greetbpt features -- like a /welcome command and a command to see resources
• New updated /about page with contributor descriptions
• Email notifications and management
• Discussion threads for groups
• Global activity feed
• Support for Github login

Mini-release: site-wide improvements

Contributors to this release:
@railsstudent
@angelocordon
@lpatmo
@BethanyG

Improvements introduced to this release:

• Refactor the "about" page - #762 (@railsstudent, code review by @distalx)
• Fix hangout page sidebar - #763 (@distalx)
• Calendar iCal support on hangout details page - #764 (@railsstudent)
• Show status of deleted hangout for admins on live or upcoming hangouts - #769 (@lpatmo, h/t to @BethanyG for pointing out the issue)
• Update Facebook group notifications to reflect more detail - #770 (@lpatmo)

New Year's Eve release

Contributors to this release:

• @railsstudent
• @angelocordon
• @lpatmo
• @tracypholmes

Happy New Year everyone! :) A big thank you to all the contributors to the project this year.

Updates in this release:

• Redesign of hangouts area and other content updates - #757 (@lpatmo, with thanks to @angelocordon who created the mockup for the redesign)
• Fallback image on contributors' page when image link expires - #756 (@railsstudent)
• Give users the ability to add a hangout to their Google Calendar (@lpatmo, with thanks to @railsstudent for finding the link/reviewing and h/t to @tracypholmes for filing the issue)

Before:

After: