What's New in SureDash

This SureDash update focuses on helping creators launch faster, run better events, and deliver a smoother experience for members.

The biggest improvements in this release are around events. Members can now add events directly to Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple Calendar-compatible apps, making it easier to stay updated and improving attendance for webinars, coaching calls, workshops, and community sessions.

We’ve also improved event management with support for end dates and end times, along with host and location details to give members clearer event information before joining.

Alongside events, onboarding has been significantly improved with AI-powered and preset-based portal creation, helping users set up a complete portal in just a few minutes. We’ve also included improvements for Breakdance compatibility and cleaner excerpt formatting across portal content.

Smarter Event Experience for Members

Events are now more practical and user-friendly for both creators and members.

Members can quickly add events to:

• Google Calendar
• Outlook
• Apple Calendar and other apps using .ics downloads

This is especially useful for communities running:

• Live coaching sessions
• Webinars
• Workshops
• Office hours
• Member meetups

We’ve also added:

• Event end date and end time support
• Event host details
• Flexible location options:
  • In-person
  • Online
  • To be announced

These improvements help members better understand event schedules and reduce confusion around attendance. https://suredash.com/docs/suredash-events-updates/

Faster AI-Powered Portal Setup

Getting started with SureDash is now much faster.

The new onboarding flow uses AI-powered and preset-based portal creation to help users build structured portals in just a few minutes instead of setting everything up manually.

This is especially helpful for:

• Course creators
• Membership communities
• Client portals
• Coaching businesses

Core Changelog

• New: Revamped the onboarding experience with AI-powered and preset-based portal creation, allowing users to set up their portal in just a few minutes.
• Improvement: Added Breakdance compatibility for the “Disable theme” option to prevent portal styling issues.
• Improvement: Enhanced excerpt handling to improve formatting and avoid unexpected text spacing issues.

Premium Changelog

• New: Added “Add to Calendar” for events — members can add an event to Google Calendar, Outlook, or download an .ics file for Apple Calendar and other apps.
• New: Events now support an explicit end date and end time, in addition to the start time.
• New: Added an event “Host” field and event location options (in-person address, online, or to be announced), shown on the event page.

This update includes a series of improvements and fixes across SureMembers Core and SureMembers Pro aimed at enhancing the overall user experience, improving compatibility, and refining platform functionality.

We’ve made several refinements to the search and portal experience, improved support for newer functionality, and addressed issues related to content visibility, navigation behavior, and embedded content rendering.

This release also includes updates aligned with the new SureMembers Core and Pro architecture, helping create a more polished and reliable experience across the platform.

As always, we’ll continue improving SureMembers with ongoing enhancements, stability updates, and new capabilities in future releases.

Core Changelog

• Improvement: Refined the SureMembers integration UI to reference the free SureMembers Core plugin instead of the premium version.
• Improvement: Refined the Search results with cleaner space result cards, and mobile dismiss button.
• Fix: Tightened access control in Search so results respect post and comment visibility — hidden or restricted content no longer appears.
• Fix: Fixed an issue where portal links — including the mobile bottom navigation (Notifications, Profile) and social login redirects — did not update after changing the portal URL slug.
• Fix: Resolved an issue where iframe embed code was not rendering properly inside community posts.

Premium Changelog

• Fix: Search now respects course and space restrictions, so restricted lessons and other protected sub-content no longer appear in results or tab counts.
• Fix: The course “Back to Portal” link now respects a customized portal URL slug.

We’re excited to roll out another powerful SureDash update focused on improving navigation, search experience, and community management inside your portal.

Whether you’re building a client portal, online community, course platform, or membership hub, these new improvements help make your portal feel more professional, organised, and easier to manage.

🔗 Create Cleaner & More Brand-Friendly Portal URLs

You can now customise portal endpoint slugs directly from the new Advanced Settings tab.

This gives admins full control over portal URLs, helping create cleaner and more branded navigation experiences for members.

Example Use Cases

• Change /bookmarks to /saved
• Rename /leaderboard to /community-ranking
• Create more client-friendly URLs for branded portals
• Match your organisation’s terminology and structure

This is especially useful for agencies, course creators, and membership communities who want a more polished and fully white-labeled experience.

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🔍 Redesigned Search Experience with Better Categorisation

The Search modal has received a major UI and UX upgrade.

Search results are now presented in a cleaner, more modern interface with improved categorisation and easier navigation — helping users quickly find discussions, courses, lessons, resources, events, and more.

Why This Matters

As your portal grows, finding content quickly becomes critical.

With the improved search experience:

• Members can discover content faster
• Communities become easier to navigate
• Course portals feel more organised
• Users spend less time searching and more time engaging

The updated design also delivers a smoother and more intuitive experience across devices.

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📩 Get Notified When Members Create New Posts

Portal admins and managers can now receive email notifications whenever a community member creates a new post.

Perfect For

• Moderating community discussions faster
• Keeping portal managers informed
• Responding quickly to member activity
• Monitoring engagement in active communities

This makes it much easier to stay connected with what’s happening inside your portal without constantly checking manually.

Core Changelog

• New: Added an Advanced settings tab to customise URL slugs for portal endpoints for cleaner, more brand-friendly URLs.
• New: Enhanced the Search modal with a modernised UI, improved functionality, and better categorised results for a smoother and more intuitive user experience.
• New: Added an option to notify admins and portal managers via email when community members create a new post.

Premium Changelog

• Improvement: Extended support for custom portal endpoints.
• Improvement: Extended support for the new search UI modal functionality.

SureDash v1.8.4 is now available with important fixes focused on improving the mobile experience and ensuring more accurate activity timestamps across the platform.

This update resolves an issue where a duplicate header could appear on mobile devices, helping create a cleaner and more consistent browsing experience for users.

We’ve also fixed a timestamp issue that could display incorrect relative times on comments (such as ~2942w ago) when comment dates were missing or invalid.

Core Changelog

• Fix: Fixed an issue where a duplicate header appeared on mobile devices.
• Fix: Fixed comment timestamps showing an incorrect relative time (e.g. ~2942w ago) when the comment date was missing or invalid.

This release primarily focuses on improving compatibility with WordPress 7, ensuring a smoother and more reliable experience across SureDash portal features and blocks.

Along with compatibility updates, we’ve included several UI refinements, minor enhancements, and stability improvements to further polish the overall user experience and developer workflow.

Core Changelog

• New: Added the suredash_allowed_iframe_hosts filter to let developers allow iframe embeds from custom hosts (e.g. self-hosted video CDNs like bunny.net) in posts and comments.
• Improvement: Added compatibility with WordPress 7 for the Portal Login and Registration blocks.
• Improvement: Refined the Login and Registration blocks with cleaner markup and minor styling enhancements.
• Fix: Fixed portal CSS breaking when the Etch page builder plugin or theme was active.
• Fix: Fixed a JavaScript console error in the comment editor when pressing Enter that could disrupt typing flow.

We’re excited to roll out a new SureDash update focused on making your portal easier to navigate, simpler to manage, and faster to build.

This release introduces powerful new Core Page spaces, streamlined onboarding tools, improved content duplication workflows, and several UI improvements and fixes to enhance the overall experience for both admins and users.

✨ New: Portal Pages as Spaces

Your portal navigation just got much more flexible.

You can now display important portal pages like:

• User Profile
• Bookmarks
• Leaderboard
• Memberships
• And more…

directly as Spaces inside the sidebar. This creates a much more seamless experience for users by keeping everything accessible from one central navigation area — no extra clicks required.

Why this matters

Users can now move through your portal more naturally, while admins can organize important features in a cleaner and more discoverable way.

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🎓 New: Learn Tab for Faster Portal Setup

Getting started with SureDash is now easier than ever. We’ve introduced a dedicated Learn tab to help admins:

• Understand portal setup faster
• Discover important features
• Configure spaces more efficiently
• Reduce setup confusion

Whether you’re launching a new community, course portal, or membership experience, the Learn tab helps you get up and running quickly.

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🔁 Pro: Duplicate Content in Seconds

Creating similar content repeatedly can be time-consuming — especially for courses, resources, and events. With this update, SureDash Pro now allows admins to duplicate existing content including:

• Course Lessons
• Sections
• Resources
• Events

Real-world use cases

• Reuse lesson structures across courses
• Duplicate recurring event templates
• Quickly recreate resource layouts
• Speed up large portal setup workflows

This feature is designed to save time and significantly reduce repetitive work.

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Core Changelog

• New: Introduced the Portal Pages space type, allowing admins to display portal pages such as User Profile, Bookmarks, Leaderboard, Memberships, and more as spaces for easier navigation.
• New: Added a new Learn tab to help admins quickly complete and configure their portal setup.
• Improvement: Implemented several UI and UX improvements across the plugin for a smoother experience.
• Fix: Fixed an issue where the Posts Sorting option did not sort correctly in some cases within Discussion spaces.
• Fix: Fixed an issue where the side border was missing in the List View layout.

Premium Changelog

• New: Added the ‘suredash_pro_disable_members_directory’ filter to allow developers to hide or disable the Members Directory page.
• Improvement: Introduced content duplication functionality to help admins quickly reuse and create similar content across the portal.

We’re excited to bring you a powerful update focused on improving user experience, enhancing customization, and helping your community connect better than ever.

Member Directory: Connect Faster (Pro)

One of the biggest additions in this release is the Member Directory, a centralised space where users can discover, search, and connect with other members in your community.

Why this matters:

• Perfect for cohort-based courses where learners want to connect with peers
• Great for membership communities to increase engagement and networking
• Helps build a stronger sense of community and belonging
• Instead of isolated users, you now enable real connections inside your portal

Better Design & Smoother UX

We’ve enhanced the overall design experience with new typography controls for the Portal Navigation block, a refreshed settings UI, and improved email template handling for consistent branding. User profiles now include a Gravatar fallback, ensuring avatars are always displayed. We’ve also improved usability with a smoother Login & Registration experience (including “already signed in” messaging and auto-redirects), better content handling with course thumbnail fallbacks, and direct file downloads.

Core Changelog

• New: Added typography options for the Portal Navigation block to control font family, size, and weight.
• New: Added a WP-CLI command to enable SureDash AI abilities from the terminal — wp suredash abilities enable with optional --with-edit and --with-delete flags.
• Improvement: Login & Registration blocks now show a friendly “already signed in” message with a “Go to Portal” action and support auto-redirect when a custom URL is set.
• Improvement: Refreshed the settings page UI for a cleaner and more intuitive experience.
• Improvement: Email templates have been improved. Overriding the wrapper email template now applies to all email designs sent from SureDash.
• Improvement: User avatars now fall back to Gravatar when no profile photo is uploaded.
• Fix: Portal names containing commas, accented characters, or other special characters no longer produce malformed email “From” headers.
• Fix: This update addressed a security bug. Props to Patchstack for reporting it responsibly to our team. Please make sure you are using the latest version on your website.
• Fix: AI ability settings can now be turned on without first installing the MCP Adapter plugin. Only the “Enable MCP Server” option still requires the adapter.

Premium Changelog

• New: Introduced a Member Directory page that lets users browse, search, and connect with community members from a single place. ( https://suredash.com/docs/how-to-set-up-members-directory-suredash/ )
• New: Added “Use Course Thumbnail as Default” option for lessons – when enabled and no featured image is set, the course thumbnail will be used as the lesson image.
• New: External resource URLs pointing to downloadable file types (PDFs, images, documents, archives, media) now trigger a download instead of opening in a new tab when the remote host sends CORS headers (e.g. Bunny CDN with “Add CORS Headers” enabled). URLs without CORS support continue to open in a new tab. ( https://suredash.com/docs/host-files-external-cdn-resource-library/ )

Managing a community or course platform should feel effortless. This update takes a solid step in that direction.

We’ve focused on making SureDash more predictable, secure, and enjoyable in everyday use. From browsing posts and searching content to checking activity in spaces, your members now see only what they’re meant to see, across the entire portal. This reduces confusion, protects private content, and builds more trust in your community.

We’ve also refined the experience on mobile, so navigating between posts, events, and resources feels smoother and more natural. Behind the scenes, we’ve laid important groundwork for smarter permissions, better analytics, and future AI-powered workflows.

What’s New & Improved

This update introduces support for the WordPress Abilities API and MCP integration, laying the foundation for more flexible permissions, better analytics, and future-ready AI-powered workflows. Alongside this, we’ve significantly improved mobile responsiveness, strengthened content security, and refined how users navigate and interact with posts. Visibility controls are now more accurate across feeds, search, and widgets, ensuring a cleaner and more relevant experience for every user.

Core Changelog

• New: Added support for the WordPress Abilities API for portal creation and analytics.
• New: Added MCP integration to support AI-powered portal management.
• Improvement: Better mobile responsiveness for a smoother experience on phones and tablets.
• Improvement: Improved translations for a more consistent experience across languages.
• Improvement: Improved content sanitization for posts and comments.
• Improvement: Posts opened from popups now load in the same tab to avoid multiple tabs.
• Improvement: Email address on the profile page is now private by default and only shown if the user chooses to add it.
• Fix: Fixed duplicate YouTube thumbnails in discussion posts.
• Fix: Assigning a portal layout template from Quick Edit was not working.
• Fix: Corrected back button behavior to return users to the original feed after viewing a post.
• Fix: Discussion unread counter no longer counts posts the user has no permission to view (visibility_scope and SureMembers access groups).
• Fix: Frontend search results no longer include restricted content that the user cannot access.
• Fix: Space sidebar widgets (Post, Recent Activities) no longer show posts, comments & content the current user does not have access to.

Premium Changelog

• New: Added support for the WordPress Abilities API to power SureDash Pro features.
• Improvement: Enhanced mobile responsiveness for Events, Resources, and Collection spaces.
• Improvement: Improved content protection for restricted lessons and posts within course integrations and community templates.

This update brings more control and a smoother experience across your portal. You can now customize widget titles to better match your space, while sorting and view preferences are saved individually making navigation more intuitive for every space.

We’ve also improved login and registration reliability with better validation and error handling, along with enhanced localization support through fully translatable strings.

On top of that, several important fixes ensure a cleaner experience email notifications now use your configured settings, duplicate WordPress emails are prevented, and restricted content is no longer visible to unauthorized users.

Core Changelog

• New: Added customizable title options for the About Space and Recent Activities widgets.
• Improvement: Sorting and view preferences are now saved per space instead of globally.
• Improvement: Made plugin strings fully translatable for better localization support.
• Improvement: Improved error handling and client-side validation for Login and Registration blocks.
• Fix: Disabled default WordPress comment notification emails for SureDash post types to prevent duplicate or unwanted emails.
• Fix: Notification emails now use the “From Email” configured in SureDash Settings instead of the WordPress admin email.
• Fix: Posts with restricted visibility are no longer shown to unauthorized users in the feeds list view.

Premium Changelog

• Improvement: Made plugin strings fully translatable for better localization support.
• Improvement: Added customizable singular text label for Course.
• Fix: User notification emails now use the “From Email” configured in SureDash Settings instead of the WordPress admin email.

This update focuses on improving the comment experience and resolving key stability issues. We’ve enhanced how comments handle formatting and fixed issues affecting layout and login functionality to ensure a smoother and more reliable experience.

Core Changelog

• Fix: Resolved issue where multi-paragraph comments displayed incorrectly in a horizontal layout.
• Fix: Addressed ‘headers already sent’ warning impacting portal login page.