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...

After the W3C, we're also proud to mention that Novell is using b2evolution for their PR blogs.

I wish those other large entities using b2evo would step forward!

So... this site is now running on b2evolution version 1.8 ...

... which will show us if this version is ready for production or not...

One thing's for sure though: it will trap all the spam! And all comments will be moderated from now on... Sorry about this, but once you let one comment spam through it gets indexed within the day and then attracts a bazillion other spammers.

Please report any issues not working on the upgraded site.

-Fran?ois.

There we are. The latest and probably the last of the 0.9.x series is available now.

Download here.

If you are running version 0.9.1, here are the news:

• Bug fixes
• More spam detecting techiques
• More locales: Basque eu_ES, Icelandic is-IS, Polish pl-PL, Estonian ee-ET, Russian ru-RU

Plus, you'll probably never get a 0.9.x update again! From now on, all efforts will go onto the new 1.8 "Phoenix" release.

Note: You still want to run 0.9.2 on heavy loaded production servers because it's still more efficient than the feature packed Phoenix releases. If you have CPU to spare on your server though, then you may want to upgrade to Phoenix in a couple of weeks.

Update: Thanks to Vee, we now have a small download available which contains only the files which have significantly changed since verison 0.9.1 (comment changes have been left out).

Thanks to Ed (Head of Central Antispam) and Ryan (New Host), we now have a brand new host for our central antispam list. It's a separate host from the main site, so we might get better performance on the one or the other if not both

Because it's a new server, you will need to do some small modifications to your b2evo installation if you want to take advantage of it.

Pick your easiest solution:

Solution 1

You're not in a hurry: just wait for the next 0.9.2 [Update: available now] or 1.8-alpha release and you'll be fine.

Solution 2

You care a lot about antispam, but not so much about pinging b2evo when you publish a new post.

Just go into your /conf/_advanced.php file, and at the end of the file replace this line:

$evonetsrv_host = 'b2evolution.net';

with this line:

$evonetsrv_host = 'antispam.b2evolution.net';

Solution 3

You're running version 0.9.1 and you want it all:

Go the end of your /conf/_advanced.php file, and add the following lines:

$antispamsrv_host = 'antispam.b2evolution.net';
$antispamsrv_port = 80;
$antispamsrv_uri = '/evonetsrv/xmlrpc.php';

Note the $antispamsrv prefix. It is different from the existing $evonetsrv lines.

Download this file and use it to replace your existing /b2evocore/_functions_antispam.php file. (If you have trouble with downloading the PHP file, you can get this ZIPped file instead).

CVS

Note: CVS servers are not up to date right now because SourceForge has had them down for the whole week... stay tuned.

Update: 0.9.2 is now up to date on CVS (look for the v-0-9-1 branch).

Yes I know this is not the one you're expecting...

We will however release a 0.9 update in the upcoming days, mostly to include a few bug fixes, easy antispam tricks and some new locales (Basque eu-ES, Icelandic is-IS, Polish pl-PL, Estonian ee-ET, Russian ru-RU).

Also, I just need to get this one out in order to clear my head!

By the way, if you have a 0.9.x language update sitting on your drive, please send it *now* ... or wait for Phoenix.

This will be the last 0.9.x release. After that one, it will be all 1.x aka Phoenix.

Update: version 0.9.2 is available now!