November 14, 2023

Last month we made a lot of small improvements and solved some bugs. We added the language switcher to the profile dropdown to help change the language faster, we added the possibility to add the thumbnail to the resource detail page, and we solved several thumbnail bugs to bring that to the next level. 🚀

As always we also integrated a few other things, changed small stuff, and solved different bugs ✌️

We will stay tuned and keep you up-to-date!
If you have any feedback contact us or post your request directly to our EQUIP Roadmap

Your Digital Team 😊

Added

Language Switcher in to the profile dropdown

Added

Language flags to the download buttons

Added

Language flags to the language filters

Added

Thumbnail to the left of the resource text

Added

Backend edit button for resources for admins & authors

Added

Backend button in the header for admins & authors

Added

Separator for the left menu

Changed

The wording of the login page (Regarding the change of the Network Membership)

Changed

The position of the close button of PDF previews

Changed

The icons for the language filters

Changed

Moved the download button in resource previews

Changed

The play button of videos for a better contrast

Changed

The design of the auto-generated thumbnails

Changed

Download All icon

Changed

Download Icon

Changed

The structure & design of the footer (Is now better responsive)

Fixed

Vimeo video caching bug

Fixed

PDF thumbnail bug (black previews)

Fixed

Automatic generated thumbnails for docx & pptx documents

Fixed

Hide title function for sections

Removed

The black filter on videos for a better contrast

Removed

Old blocked users

October 2023
October 3, 2023

With these two releases, we have finally managed to activate the PDF Preview for Mobile and desktop so that you can preview PDF documents on EQUIP before downloading them. 📑 ⬇️

We also integrated a few other things, changed small stuff, and solved different bugs ✌️

We will stay tuned and keep you up-to-date!
Your Digital Team 😊

Added

PDF Preview for mobile & desktop

Added

Profile pictures (Also existing ones) to the Frontpage

Added

A Roadmap Overview for EQUIP

Added

A shortcut to ICF College (Teachings) and Community Channels (icf.church/communities)

Added

“New on EQUIP” Roadmap Shortcut

Added

Releases & New Resources Telegram Chat Shortcut in the footer

Changed

The invite mail text, for more clarity

Changed

Added a custom tracking link für the donation button

Fixed

EQUIP Frontend was down several times

Fixed

Logout problems (Users where not able to log out)

Fixed

Where the "&" sign was not correctly shown

Fixed

Small Sidebar UX bug

Removed

The “Based on my categories” on the front page

May 2023
May 28, 2023
ICF EQUIP v2.4.0 - EQUIP Favorites

WE ARE CELEBRATING A NEW EQUIP UPDATE ❤️🎉

We did it again! We have published a major update of EQUIP - We now have Favorites!

You can now:

🤝 Save your favorite resources as favorites
🙌 See an overview of your favorites in your profile at any time
✌️ You can filter & sort your favorites
👏 You can recognize your favorites anywhere on EQUIP by the ❤️

Test the new feature
👉 https://icf.church/equip

Have fun 🎉
Your Digital Team

Added

Favorites feature for resources ❤️

Added

Favorites overview in the profile

Added

Favorites Counter in the overview

May 24, 2023

With these three updates, we switched our picture hosting from tiny.pictures to imgix to save money. We also integrated a few other things, changed small stuff, and solved different bugs.

Added

https://imgix.com/ integration

Added

Google tag manager (for favorites and downloads)

Added

Sentry for the new frontend

Added

The new frontend to status.icf.church

Added

Icons for the menu buttons

Added

Resource category icons

Changed

2 rows now for the footer menu

Changed

Content entries should only be clickable if preview is available

Fixed

Defect previews of resources

Fixed

A database problem (update —> emoticons were not working in the backend & frontend)

Fixed

Broken invite mail links

Fixed

Broken resource links

Fixed

Broken resource download links

Fixed

Resource language slug bug

Fixed

PDF Thumbnail bug

Fixed

Redirection bug (path if resource name has been changed)

Fixed

The scroll menu on he left side

Removed

tiny.pictures integration

Removed

GitLab Webhooks

March 2023
March 9, 2023

A lot has happened since our last release. That's why we're also combining versions 2.1.0, 2.1.1 & 2.2.0 here.

The Profile Page and the Church Invite Page have been completely renewed. Everything is now easier to navigate, more beautiful, mobile-friendly, and has several more functions. Feel free to test the new functions https://icf.church/equip.

We also have a new view for resources 🎉 You can now look at the resources in a table view and easily filter and sort them. The resources are now also displayed on several pages.

We were able to fix some bugs and also implemented some new things. You can see the complete list below if you are interested in the details.

Have fun ✌️

Changed

New redesign of the church invite page (easier, new design & layout, better overview, more functions)

Changed

New redesign of the profile page

Changed

Deactivated the possibility to delete or reject a invite

Changed

The resolution of preview pictures

Changed

The resource title on mobile (now online two lines)

Added

Table view to the resource pages (sort by name, description, type, last modified)

Added

Sort-by function to the mobile user list

Added

Type filter option

Added

Pagination

Added

NEW Tag for new resources

Added

Helpscout beacon to all pages

Added

Backend: Live preview info for admins

Added

New error pages for mobile and desktop

Fixed

Redirect to current path if resource name has been changed

Fixed

Changing user roles was not possible

Fixed

Saving the current pagination page and filters

Fixed

Backend: Live preview was not working

Fixed

Redirect to my recently opened link, if I am not logged in yet

Fixed

Different embed problems with youtube and Vimeo

Fixed

Resource preview bug

Fixed

That user invites added to the wrong church

Removed

Hubspot code

February 2023
February 15, 2023
ICF EQUIP v2.0.0 - New Frontend

🤩 A NEW LOOK FOR EQUIP! 🤩

For some time now, we’ve been working on something exciting in the background. 

We are thrilled to finally be able to present EQUIP to you in its new design. It has never been easier to find inspiring resources for your church on our platform! 

From now on, you can also use EQUIP cleanly on your mobile. 
We hope you like the improved platform! 👏

Changed

Mobile-first Redesign

Changed

A new user-friendly interface

Changed

Improved navigation

Changed

Faster search

Added

Better support form (HelpScout)

Added

New Error pages with call-to-action

Added

More analytics (Google Tag Manager, New Google Analytics, Hotjar)

Fixed

Password reset problems

Fixed

Fixed duplicate encoding of special characters in the frontend (fixes & instead of &)

Fixed

Hugely improved the speed in the backend

November 2020
November 18, 2020

Improved Search Behavior

Hey there, and welcome back!

It's been a really long time since you last heard from us. Sorry about that. We did however try to make this release count - and we think we did just that! 💪

While it might seem like a minor thing, actually improving the search makes all the difference for the user. You see, searching is at the core of almost all online behaviour. There's a reason that "googling" has become a verb, and I always chuckle when I hear sentences like "Just Google it on YouTube!" (which is technically less wrong than it first sounds - but I disgress... 🤔)

We wanted to give our users the search experience they deserve and are used to on the internet, which is far more difficult than it first sounds - if we try to do it ourselves. Our search worked, and mostly returned the results one would expect - but the performance was, let's say, mediocre at best. 😐 We spent a lot of time investigating what could be improved to boost performance - and I mean a LOT of time - without much success. After all, building search is not easy. ... or is it?

Enter Algolia!

Algolia offers a hosted search API for sites like ours to use. Basically we just provide the data to be searched, and they handle the actual search request - complete with typo tolerance, custom rankings and more advanced features like synonyms or rules. All those features are nice and all - but they're not what we were after. Our #1 priority was improving the performance of our search, while still making sure our users receive the results they'd expect. That was our requirement to Algolia... and boy, did they deliver! It's not just fast, it's - well, look: 👀 Screenshot

Yes, that's one ms. No, I didn't click multiple times to get that result. 🤷‍♂️

Just try it for yourself! It's really fast!

While we're at it...

Just as the search got so fast, it became really apparent that large images take some time to load. I mean, who wants to wait on the images loading after you already see the search results being generated? So - we fixed it. Usually one would go about and automatically resize the image to the required dimensions on their own servers (requiring processing power), save it for future requests (requiring storage) and then deliver it to the user (requiring bandwidth). What if there was someone who already did all that? Turns out: there is!

tiny.pictures is a service that acts both as a reverse proxy and as a CDN, all while being able to apply a variety of operations on the source image. Sorry, what was that? 🤔 Alright, again: The search thumbnails are now loaded from tiny.pictures. If they don't have the image yet, they load it from our server once, then resize it, crop it (even trying to keep faces in focus) and save it on their servers. For every following request they just immediately return the small version - resulting in lightning fast image load times! ⚡️

Alright, but what else?

Of course, there are a few other things here and there. Most of them are minor reworks, some small tweaks here and there. We'll list a couple of them below.👇

Thanks for reading!

As always, if you have any suggestions or ideas, or just wanna give us feedback: we're more than happy to hear from you! Get in touch! 🙂

Changed

Search is now powered by Algolia

Changed

Search thumbnails are retrieved via tiny.pictures

Changed

Subcategories are shown before the categories' resources to allow for quicker access

Changed

LazyCron is now triggered via the system cron instead of on page load - which should improve performance by lowering the load on our webservers

Fixed

Admin login via email now works (previously only worked using the internal username)

Changed

When resending an invite to a user, the invitations expiration date is reset

April 2019
April 9, 2019

Over the past few weeks, we have reworked large amounts of our code base to make the site faster and more secure. We have also improved the way files are previewed:

Old way: Screenshot-2019-04-09-at-16-50-58.png

Shiny new previews: Screenshot-2019-04-09-at-16-53-14.png

Changed

Access controll for resources

Added

Improved previews of files and videos

January 2019
January 14, 2019

New Homepage 🎉

New Homepage We have redesigned our homepage for you. Featured resources are now front and center and the resources of categories you follow are now more prominent. We also redesigned and streamlined the navigation.There you'll find a new category overview as well as your user settings.

Added

Redesigned Homepage

Changed

Redesigned Homepage

December 2018
December 10, 2018

In this release, we improved the onboaring for new users:

Added

Church-Email-Domains: The user can now register for an Equip account if she/he logs in with a social account and an email address that is linked to an existing church email domain.

Changed

Invite related functions have been refactored to a module

March 2018
March 28, 2018

Welcome to ICF Equip

ICF Equip is our new resource platform, created to empower you and your local church.

Added

User Login with accounts of Gmail, Facebook and Microsoft

Added

Church Admins can invite other members

Added

You can now also search for resource types and categories

Added

Collections can feature a set of related resources

Changed

Simplified User profile dropdown

Fixed

Clicking on overview pages from the breadcrumb redirects to the homepage instead of throwing a nasty error.