The exciting release time has come again. "Phoenix" has moved to something more mature we now call the "Summer Beta" and it is available for download today:

Download here

As said, it is a Beta, which means there are still issues (like pesky bugs) but nothing critical though. It is strong enough to run this site as well as the developpers' sites... so there's a pretty good chance it's ready for you too!

New features include:

• Validation of email address to activate user's account on registration (enabled by default) (blueyed)
• Users and anonymous visitors can opt-out to receive emails through message form (blueyed)
• Extended plugin architecture: (blueyed)
  • Event-driven instantiation of Plugins
  • Interface for Settings and UserSettings
  • Easy setup for a database schema a plugin wants
• Antispam:
  • Basic guestbook spambot defeating techniques -- basic spambots account for over 90% of the comment spam!! (fplanque)
  • Comment moderation (enabled for each blog by default) (fplanque)
  • Broadened keyword matching (fplanque)
  • Publish/Delete comments based on spam karma threshold, reported by plugins (blueyed)
  • "Basic Antispam Plugin":
    • Double-checking referers moved there (blueyed)
    • Option to check content in trackbacks about link to your blog; enabled by default (blueyed)
    • rel="nofollow" is now optional
    • Option to disable feedback from anonymous visitors (blueyed)
  • DNS Blacklist antispam plugin (blueyed)
  • Blocking requests where the referer has been detected as spam is now optional. Also it does not block requests to the backoffice any longer. (blueyed)
• Usability:
  • "Exit to blogs..." link respects selected blog (blueyed)
  • Preview for comments in frontoffice (blueyed)
• ItemList2 class which will replace ItemList. Better performance, security, stability and new features:
  • Filtering of posts on assignees with assgn=1 or assgn=1,2 or assgn=-1,2 or assgn=-
  • Filtering of posts on extra statuses with status=1 or status=1,2 or status=-1,2 or status=-
• Scheduled tasks (cron) framework (fplanque)
  • Automatic retrieval of antispam blacklist (fplanque)
• db_delta() functionality that allows easier upgrading (blueyed)
• MySQL 5 strict mode compatibility (blueyed)
• Fixed/Rewritten Auto-P plugin (blueyed)
• ETag-header- and GZip-compression-support moved into transport optimizer plugin (blueyed)
• Removed no longer supported Geeklog and Miniblog upgraders. (It is still possible to upgrade from those by upgrading to b2evo 0.9 and then to b2evo 1.x
• Added /conf/_basic_config.php which holds just the basic settings (as _config.php before, but without the including the other files). You should merge your settings from _config.php to _basic_config.php.
• Many many many bug fixes...