A quick update about the development...

Posted by on Feb 21, 2005 in Development

It's been quite a long time since the last major release of b2evo. The good thing about this is that our 0.9.0.x series are pretty nice and stable. The not so good thing is that a load of new features are still stuck in the development version on the SourceForge CVS... and if you're not into hacking with CVS code, you might even wonder what the hell is going on... Thus, I thought we should go for a quick update...

My first releases of b2evolution were built upon cafelog/b2 which happened to be the tool I had picked for my own weblog. Over the last two years, the code, the community and the usage of b2evo have grown far beyond my original intent. Besides, I could no longer maintain such a big project on my own personal spare time...

Fortunately, there have been two major events affecting the development of b2evo. First, the development team has grown significantly, and second, most of us have come to actually use b2evolution professionally, as part of our day jobs... with the nice side effect of virtually bringing commercial company support to the project - read: "paid development time" ! :)

At my own employer's we use that thing we've come to call "evocore" as the framework for a major application we are building internally. This application has not much to do with blogging, but reusing all the existing framework/core code saves us a lot of time. We've also been extending the evocore significantly and I'm working on taking advantage of the new features in the higher level b2evo features and interface.

Another interesting side-effect of this is that all the original cafelog/b2 code is slowly being wiped out in favor of brand new evocore code. This wasn't originally planned until version 2.0 of (b2)evolution. However, what we have in CVS now is getting pretty close to that. So I don't know what the next release will be numbered nor when it will occur, but it might be a major one! ;)

I don't want to talk too much for the other devs since most of what they've told me about what they are developing is still confidential, but I hope a few of them will add a few comments here and let you know.

Anyway, if you want to know where we're headed we could put it like this: we're extending the "Multilingual multiuser multi-blog engine" by focusing on these points: versatility ("multipurpose" blogging), stability, maintainability, security, professional grade codebase. We may omit to focus specifically on some fashion features but we're extending the plugin architecture so that anything you need could be hooked. (If you need some hooks in order to develop a plugin, feel free to contact me, but please use the CVS version for development.)

Finally I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all members of the development team B) for their contribution to the project as well as the forum moderators and daily users B) for their invaluable time and effort in supporting the newcommers. Not to forget the supporting users and fans B) who encourage us to maintain the public blog app after our already-overloaded-work-days...

Thank you all! :)

Stay tuned for more... or check out CVS if you can't wait! ;D

-François.

16 comments

Comment from: Nate

I appreciate the news. It’s nice to (finally) hear that development is still active and making large strides.

You guys have done a great job so far, and I look forward to what you have in the future.

Comment from: buoncri

It’s good to have news about the development to know your plans for the future, thanks and have Good Work :-)

Comment from: Siegfried

Great to hear, that b2evolution is on its way!
Keep to good work going. Thanks.

Comment from: Ben

Hey, that’s great to hear! I’ve just weeks ago installed b2evo on the site because of it’s multi-user with user rights multi-blog abilities. But since the install I’ve worried a bit that development seemed to have stalled and wp (I use that for my personal, single-user single-blog blog) may have been the better choice… now I rest reassured that this was the way to go for the larger project.

Thanks for all your hard work and keep it up!

Comment from: Sylvestre

I love your bloging system. But I miss some features (like links or gallery), then I’d like to test the CVS version to see if you implement that stuff. Is here a changelog for the new version ?

Merci !

Comment from: Frank

Thanks for the update Francois: greatly appreciated. I’m looking forward to the next version and meanwhile I might even try and get my head around CVS…

Comment from: Vin

Mailing Lists please
Comment Preview Button please
Tons o’plugins
Tons of good added features please

GO!GO!GO!

Comment from: Myles

I’ll always be behind b2evo. Good luck with the development.

Comment from: Sergei

Make the Blog that when people regiter their can post straight away without the manual interference.

Comment from: Boris

Excellentes nouvelles ! Merci et bon courage !

Comment from: Neobrain

That’s great to hear François. I hope you guys make B2Evo into the Content Management System is so close to be, not just a blog, but a petite yet powerful CMS for blogging, news, and photo galleries. Please remember to include a Photo Gallery!

Cheers!

Comment from: Mohamed Almazroui

Great work….looking forward to the new revise of b2ev.

Comment from: Oriana

B2evo kicks ass! :D

But… I just thought I’d point out that not all of us need multilingual support, maybe a version without this?

Comment from: CLoWnZ

Hi François,
I just wanted to let you know I greatly appreciate your project. Your time, dedication and keeping it open source is a very honorable thing. I read some prior posts and saw some people whining about things and I was thinking what gives them the right to whine? Nothing. They should be greatful for this awesome scripting you’ve done. I do wish there was a larger type profile available for new users registering. Also the ability to add pictures in the profile with ranking stars underneath so they could be rated or ranked like hotornot.com and that the registered user name/password could be used with a phpbb installation. Im not at all complaining..I just am not a great coder. So Im throwing those ideas out there for anyone who does and maybe give em some ideas. I want to see your script to be the best, most used open source blogging system. I will definitely be donating to your cause soon :)

CLoWnZ

Comment from: danielmorrison

François,

What about including the SourceForge stats on the home page? https://sourceforge.net/project/stats/?group_id=85535 (or via RSS). Maybe stick the graph in a noticeable location? I think it would be a cool way for newcomers to see how active the project really is.

However, I see that SF is having problems updating the stats… maybe when that is fixed.

Comment from: JP

Thank you for your update, it’s nice to know that core guys are developing new version. I hope we can get sneak preview soon.