What’s New with v5!

Sngine v5 is out today, and it is the biggest release we have ever shipped: a brand-new default theme, a full Dating module, rebuilt Stories, Reels, Live and Chat, and a faster core that stays quick as your community grows.

We touched almost every screen of the platform. Over 180 additions and improvements landed in this version, and we removed 16 legacy JavaScript libraries plus FontAwesome along the way. Here is a tour of what’s new.

Meet Nova, the new default theme

Nova is a ground-up redesign of Sngine, built on Tailwind CSS v4 with modern UI kits. Every page, from the newsfeed to the admin panel, has a cleaner layout, smoother night mode and a mobile-first feel.

You also get far more control over how your site looks, without touching code:

• 9 new landing page designs to choose from, plus a Themes Demo to preview them

• Per-theme design: colors, wallpaper, night mode, fluid width and custom CSS, saved separately for each theme

• Theme fonts from Google Fonts or your own local files

• Mobile bottom bar you build by dragging items into place and reordering them

• Left panel menu manager to sort, hide or move items under “See More”

• Module names so you can rename any module (call Groups “Circles”, if you like) from Admin Panel › Design

• Country flags, a compact PWA install card, and a rich text editor that follows night mode

Dating, built right in

v5 adds a complete Dating module. Members swipe to like, pass or Super Like, and a mutual like becomes a match that can always chat.

• A separate dating profile with its own photos, bio, interests and preferences, kept apart from the main profile

• Browse with filters by gender, age, distance, city and interests

• Privacy controls: hide from friends, hide age or distance, go incognito, pause or leave dating at any time

• Safety options: a minimum age, verified members only, and photo approval before photos go live

• Ways to earn: Pro packages can unlock unlimited swipes, see who liked you, rewind, incognito, Super Likes and boosts, and members can buy Super Like packs, profile boosts and send a message with a like from their wallet

• A full admin area with a dashboard, settings, members, photo review, interests, an ads placement, and a Dating permission for permission groups and moderators

Stories and Reels, rebuilt

Stories now open in a new full-screen viewer and composer with everything members expect from a modern story app.

• Text stories with fonts, colors and backgrounds

• Stickers, emojis, drawing and filters, plus mention and link stickers

• Music from iTunes search or your own admin music library

• Polls, reactions and replies, with replies arriving as chat messages

• Views and a viewers list, and Highlights pinned to profiles

• Privacy: public, friends, close friends, or hide a story from specific people

• Moderation: report stories, a Stories moderator permission, and a Stories section in the AdminCP for settings, active stories and the music library

Reels got a full revamp too, and video processing now skips 1440p and 2160p conversions for Reels to save storage and time. Videos across the site open in a lightbox with comments, reactions and a download button, and Watch has new My Videos and Friends & Following tabs.

A much better chat

Messaging picked up the features people use every day:

• Reply, react, pin, copy and delete any message

• Videos and files as attachments, several at once alongside photos, with a download button and an admin toggle for file uploads

• GIFs in chat messages and in comments

• Group chats where you can add or remove people and rename the conversation

• Messages to Pages: members can message a Page, and Page admins get their own Pages Inbox (with a toggle in the Admin Panel and Page settings)

• Admin review for reported messages and conversations

Audio and video calls have a new interface with mute, camera on/off and full-screen controls. Every call is now logged in the conversation as missed, declined or with its duration, and the chat socket server restarts on its own when you change call settings.

Live streaming, reimagined

Live now runs on LiveKit, so broadcasters can go live from the browser or from OBS and any RTMP streaming software. Saved live videos can be stored on S3-compatible storage such as Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, DigitalOcean Spaces and Backblaze B2.

• A Live directory with Live Now and Ended streams, categories, search and a country filter, plus a My Lives tab

• Stream details: title, description, category and audience (public, friends or followers)

• Real-time comments, replies and reactions, with flying reactions on screen and comments visible to the broadcaster

• Viewer controls for sound and full screen

• Follower notifications whenever someone they follow goes live

Hosts also get real moderation tools. They can appoint moderators, time out, mute, kick or ban viewers straight from the comment menu, turn on slow mode, and block words, links and repeated comments. Chat rules can be set by the admin as a default and by each host, and every action is kept in a moderation log.

Forums, Blogs and posts

Forums were revamped with a new categories home, a Recent Threads page, a thread timeline and inline replies. Threads can be pinned, locked, liked, sorted (latest, top, newest, oldest) and quoted, forums get their own colors and icons, and there are suggested threads and an RSS feed.

Blogs got a new article page with reading time, plus:

• Scheduled articles and saved articles

• A paid preview image for premium articles

• Search, a Manage page, RSS, and an option to search inside article content

• An admin option to require a cover image

Posts are more flexible as well. Members can fully edit a post in the publisher, reorder photos in multi-photo posts, and pick from a new photos layout system. Admins can require re-approval for edited posts, set a post edit time limit, and choose how long a unique post view counts (lifetime or a number of days). Post creators can now see original and locked view counts.

Across the site you’ll also find mutual friends on directory cards, People You May Know ranked by mutual friends, shortcuts you can pin, hide or auto-sort, and search and pagination for Games, Movies and Funding.

Ads and payments

Advertisers can now target ads by age range, and ads rotate per viewer session so the same person sees more variety. A new toggle gives higher-budget campaigns priority. Promoted posts appear in a carousel of up to 5 posts in the newsfeed.

On the payments side, v5 adds iyzico as a new gateway, and the Dating perks, Super Like packs, boosts and paid blog previews above give your members more to buy.

Faster, lighter and ready to scale

We rewrote the heaviest queries so pages stay fast whether you have a thousand members or a million. Suggestions, promoted widgets, ad campaigns and People Near You no longer rely on random database sorting, and “load more” on every list (feeds, comments, chat, people, reactions, pages, groups and events) now stays quick deep into the list.

• Faster search for posts, which now also matches titles of blogs, jobs, products, offers, courses, funding and live streams

• Faster distance filters for Market, Jobs, Offers, Funding, Courses and Blogs

• Faster deep pages in the AdminCP, Directory, Forums and Support

• Optional Redis for widgets, relationships, sessions and post views, with a connection test and monitor in the AdminCP

• System settings and translation caching, with a Clear System Cache tool

• Lazy header menus: notifications, messages and friend requests load only when opened

• A lighter frontend: jQuery 4, JavaScript libraries served locally instead of from CDNs, and 16 legacy libraries plus FontAwesome removed

Storage and services have more choice too. v5 supports OVH Object Storage, Bunny Storage and Storj. You can pick DeepL or LibreTranslate for translations (and Yandex moved to Yandex Cloud Translate), use OpenStreetMap for geolocation with no API key, and connect IPinfo for session locations, automatic country for new members and new-location login alerts. Infobip SMS was updated to its latest API.

A smarter admin panel

Running your site takes fewer clicks in v5. A command palette lets admins jump to any page or setting by typing, and the quick search can find settings too.

• Monthly insights on the dashboard, plus stats for Groups, Events and Blogs

• Sitemap generator for XML sitemaps, robots.txt, llms.txt and IndexNow

• Search index tool, backups list with download and delete, and cronjob last run and status

• Watermark position picked by dragging on a live preview for photos and videos, with an opacity slider

• Upload size limits as simple menus, from 1 MB to 25 GB

• Comments permission in permission groups to control who can comment and reply

• Custom verification documents for users and pages, which you can rename or turn off

• User tools to end all sessions of a user or reset their profile info, and to change your license key from the AdminCP

Security got attention as well: unusual login detection now only ends sessions that move to another country (using IPinfo), and the Getting Started flow saves members’ info as they click Next.

Upgrading to v5

v5 needs PHP 8.4 or later and MySQL 8.0. Redis is optional and can be turned on later from AdminCP › Settings › Redis.

To upgrade, follow our update instructions.

Rather leave it to us? Our team can install or update Sngine for you with our Installation & Update Service, now 30% off until the end of October 2026.

This release also fixes 20 bugs, including Plisio payments, live stream cloud recording and duplicate items in load more. The full list is in the changelog.

Thank you for building your communities with Sngine. We can’t wait to see what you do with v5!