Happy New Year to all b2evolution fans around the world! :)

2010 will be a very interesting year for b2evolution with the release of b2evolution version IV.

While the development version of b2evo IV is already packed with new features, it is also already significantly faster than all previous versions due notably to built in caching capabilities that go far beyond what was done before. (It also flat out beats competing publishing solutions out of the box ;)

We already have many new features implemented for this version, we still anticipate several months of development before reaching a stable release. We are now particularly focused on these areas:

• Extending skin capabilities (skins fom previous versions will remain compatible though)
• Using b2evo in a "CMS style", that is for sites that "do not look like a blog" (the default behaviour will remain blog oriented though)

You will find a non final list of features that are already implemented in the development version/CVS below.

...

Now is also a good time to post feature requests ;) We cannot guarantee we'll have time to address them all, but now is a good time since we have the basics in place and are still thinking about the specifics. You can post them as comments here or on twitter to @b2evolution. Feel free to "bump up" old requests with a title and a link to a previous request.

Either way, please try to sum up your requests in one short sentence (even if you follow with a paragraph of details or a link to more info, having concise descriptions helps all contributors in picking what to investigate and/or work on. It also helps other users to scan and vote "+1" :)

Because there have been many questions about the following already, let me stress this clearly:

• Skins from v2 and v3 will generally work with v4.
• Plugins from v2 and v3 will generally work with v4.
• v4 includes an upgrade script that can upgrade from any previous version of b2evolution back to v 0.6.

So here's what you can find in the development version in CVS already:

• Blog features:

  • Separate search page -- disp=search -- destined to gather advaced search params (@francoisplanque)
  • Post index feature -- disp=postidx (@francoisplanque)
  • Site map feature (HTML, not XML which already existed) -- disp=sitemap (@francoisplanque)
  • Help page (to be completed) -- disp=help (@francoisplanque)
  • Images can now be linked at the top or after "more" in a post (@blueyed)

• Widgets:

  • Avatar widget (@blueyed)
  • Enhanced Menu link widget (@francoisplanque)
  • Enhanced Common navigation links widget (@francoisplanque)
  • Tag cloud widget now has a random order option (@waltercruz)

• Performance:

  • Optimized for PHP5 (still works on PHP4 but we strongly recommend PHP5)
  • BlockCache stored to memroty (APC Cache): every widget is now cached individually and regenerated only when need (provided it declares proper dependency keys). This provides a significant performance boost. More underway. (@francoisplanque)
  • User agent type is now saved directly into the hits table instead of a costly lookup in user agents table (@francoisplanque)

• Maintenance:

  • Integrated backup feature (Database and files) (@evofactory)
  • Automated upgrade feature -- WARNING: for testing only at this point. It will overwrite your current version! (@evofactory)

• Blog features:

  • Separate search page -- disp=search -- destined to gather advaced search params (@francoisplanque)
  • Post index feature -- disp=postidx (@francoisplanque)
  • Site map feature (HTML, not XML which already existed) -- disp=sitemap (@francoisplanque)
  • Images can now be linked at the top or after "more" in a post (@blueyed)

• Widgets:

  • Avatar widget (@blueyed)
  • Enhanced Menu link widget (@francoisplanque)
  • Enhanced Common navigation links widget (@francoisplanque)
  • Tag cloud widget now has a random order option (@waltercruz)

• Comments:

  • Display avatars for comments (@sam2kb)
  • Backoffice comment editing: Allow changing of "Allow message form" setting for guest comments (@tblue)

• Backoffice:

  • Messaging module (@evofactory)
  • Added post type permissions (@tblue)
  • Blog options: Added option to sort comments by ascending or descending order (@tblue)
  • Check whether user is allowed to edit post when updating it (saving to DB) (@tblue)
  • Improved actions after upload - link file or inset img tag (@blueyed,@francoisplanque)
  • In addition to upload, there is now an option to get images from an URL (@blueyed)
  • Linked files can now be visually located (@blueyed)
  • Durations can now be entered in days/hours/minutes/seconds instead of large amounts of seconds (@evofactory)
  • Mass post creation feature - useful for importing data to be released over time (@evofactory)
  • Support iconv() on urltitle generation (@tblue)
  • Better handling of "Publish!" button on post form (@francoisplanque)

• Tools

  • Clear full page cache (/cache directory) (@sam2kb)
  • Clear thumbnail caches (.evocache directories) (@sam2kb)
  • Optimize database tables (MyISAM tables used for sessions & logs)

• Users & Groups:

  • Give the admin/users better control on whether or not they can have multiple concurrent sessions. (@evofactory)
  • Option to have different session timeouts for different users (@evofactory)
  • Option to have nicknames used as IDs set by the admin, not the user. (@evofactory)
  • Modules & Plugins can now define their own group permissions (@evofactory)

• XML-RPC:

  • MetaWeblog API: Use mt_keyword field to get/set post tags. Affected methods: metaWeblog.newPost, metaWeblog.editPost, metaWeblog.getRecentPosts, metaweblog.getPost. (@tblue)
  • MovableType API: Implemented mt.supportedMethods. (@tblue)
  • MovableType API: Implemented mt.publishPost (@tblue,@waltercruz)
  • MetaWeblog API: Implemented mt_allow_comments and mt_excerpt (@tblue,@waltercruz)
  • WordPress API: basic support for the following methods: wp.getPageList, wp.getUsersBlogs, wp.getPageStatusList, wp.getPostStatusList, wp.getCategories and wp.uploadFile (@waltercruz)
  • XML-RPC can be disabled (@tblue,@waltercruz)
  • Added missing permission checks (@tblue)
  • Improved metaWeblog.newMediaObject (@tblue)
  • Fixed API method signatures (return values) (@tblue)
  • Use correct charsets. (@tblue)
  • Check extra categories before checking permissions to post to them (sends correct XML-RPC error on failure). (@tblue)

• Technical mumbo-jumbo:

  • Debug mode can be turned on & off through the URL with a password (@francoisplanque)

  • SQL optimizations (@blueyed)

    • SQL_NO_CACHE for queries selecting from T_sessions/T_hitlog
    • Remove information about seconds from item issue and start date, so that those queries can get cached for up to one minute now.
  • Fixed a bug in fetch_remote_page() (wrong $info array keys). (@tblue)
  • Item::get_tags(): Bugfix and optimization: Remember items without tags and do not try to fetch tags for them on the next call. (@sir_yabs, @tblue)
  • Code highlight plugin: Correctly unfilter item contents. (@sir_yabs/@tblue)
  • Plugin hooks: Always trigger AfterCommentUpdate/AfterItemUpdate, not only if Comment/Item has changed. (@sir_yabs/@tblue)
  • Added hooks to let plugins handle disp modes: GetHandledDispModes & HandleDispMode (@sir_yabs, @francoisplanque)
  • Extended skin tag params (@leeturner)
  • Increased core modularity
  • TinyMCE 3.2.7 (@blueyed)