Overview

WriteFreely should periodically check to see if a new version is available, so instance admins can be alerted.

Background

It should be easy to keep up with new releases without following our updates all over the web.

Users

Admins

Implementation

A couple times a day -- maybe 2 or 4 -- a WriteFreely instance should make a request to an authoritative source that responds with information on whether or not the instance is out of date. If it is, admins should see an unobtrusive banner on backend pages (Blogs, Drafts, Admin dash, etc.) that includes:

• A message indicating there's an update
• A link to the release on GitHub
• A link to the release information on https://blog.writefreely.org

It should be possible to close this message, and not see it again until another update is available. When clicked, a row should be inserted in the userattributes table with an attribute like: saw-update-{version}

Considerations

It should probably be possible to turn this off, or make it opt-in only, so this can run in completely private environments.

We might support configuring the update-checking URL, so admins can set this to their own hosted solution (but then, is it even necessary?)