You will find details about this new release here.

With this new version, we are releasing features that didn’t need to wait for version 7.0 to come out. Yes, v7 is coming soon. It’s just that it’s such a major thing (really !) that it has a lot of little bugs to iron out.

Now, this seemingly small 6.10.3 release is actually a major milestone in b2evolution’s shift from glorified blogs to full-featured Content Management System. In this release you can define Item Types with very refined custom fields. You can then create Items of the desired types. You can use the custom fields in various ways (either in your content or in your skin code) and you can even compare items of same or different types with each other (b2evolution will automatically produce detailed comparison tables like this one).

Once again, we are describing big concepts here and we should actually show some examples. We’re guilty of that again. We’d like to promise we’ll solve that once 7.0 is out, but history tells us we’ll likely be absorbed into v8 by then…

OK, I don’t know how, but we really need to sort that out!!

For a while, I’ve tried to come up with newsletter styles / grouped news posts. The problem is that it never felt quite right to issue one without waiting for another’s piece of news, and then another, etc.

So scratch that. I’m back to posting tidbits of news whenever they come up.

And here you have it: b2evo 6.10.1 (stable) has been released. Release notes here. You can download it or auto-upgrade it. We are using it on this site and a handful of others. It’s proven stable already.

The reason we released 6.10.x and not 7.0.x is the infamous GDPR. (Do you enjoy all the GDPR related emails you get these days?)

b2evo 6.10.1 goes a long way toward GDPR compliance. I’m not saying 100% here because this regulation is very deep and we won’t know for a while if we finally hit the bottom or not. One thing for sure, the FUD around it is even worse as with the previous cookie regulations. Anyways, if you find something that’s "not GDPR enough" in your opinion, please let us know and we’ll address it.

Ironically, the other big thing in 6.10 is mailing lists & automations. It’s loaded with super powerful features but we haven’t quite finished the doc yet. So I’ll get back to you on that later. For now, let’s just say it plays super nice with user preferences and easy unsubscribe and it is GDPR compatible ;) … but more on this later…

Cheers!

Ok, so we’re definitely late on delivering the news… but we have been delivering quite a few new releases!

First, in the 6.8.x branch: 6.8.8-stable, 6.8.9-stable, 6.8.10-stable and 6.8.11-stable. These were mostly stability improvements. We will probably not update the 6.8.x branch any more and, at this time, we encourage everyone to upgrade to the 6.9.x branch!

Then, in the 6.9.x branch: 6.9.1-beta, 6.9.2-beta and 6.9.3-stable. 6.9.3 is really the best option for almost everyone at this point. Read through all release notes to see the new features!! In a nutshell: more settings for customizing skins, new widgets, enhanced plugins (including video plugins), enhanced custom fields, better search feature, enhanced wordpress importer, extended REST API, many new back-office tools.

What comes next? 7.0 of course! Mind you, we have been working on it for over a year already! Expect an alpha release in the next couple of weeks.

And last but not least, we have released a new skin: Jared Skin… with more new skins to come in the next couple of weeks.

As you can see… we’ve been so busy with the new developments that we almost forgot to tell you about them! We’ll try to be a bit more chatty in the future ;)

Wait! March already? Where did December go?

Is it too late to wish you all a happy new year? Probably. Yes…

However, it’s not to later to deliver a Happy 2017!!

Since we last wrote a news post we have had a bunch of releases: 6.7.8-stable, 6.7.9-stable, 6.7.10-stable, 6.7.11-stable… and that was just for the 6.7.x branch.

Then came a whole new 6.8.x branch: 6.8.0-beta, 6.8.1-stable, 6.8.2-stable, 6.8.3-stable, 6.8.4-stable, 6.8.5-stable, 6.8.6-stable, 6.8.7-stable… and 6.8.8 is just around the corner!

A lot of releases, right? Indeed. We have switched to releasing more often, and we try to deliver as many bug fixes as possible as quickly as possible. Thank you all for your bug reports, and as always thank you for including screenshots which make it easy for us to narrow down on the problem much quicker.

Now let’s not forget new features! 6.8.x was packed with new features and the recently released 6.9.0-beta adds another layer. 6.9.1 is also just around the corner with some more.

Here are a few of our favorite new features added in 6.8 and 6.9:

• Ability to attach files to new posts in the front office (useful for forums) and in the back-office without saving post first
• Ability to attach an image to each category and to use it as a fall-back for posts without an image in the Universal Item List Widget
• Ability to attach an image to image and logo widgets instead of providing a relative filepath
• Added [audio:...] short tag
• Single post display is now controlled through widgets
• Analytics aggregation can keep infinite history of visits in the DB. See Global Hits Summary
• PhpBB3 Import
• … and a lot of usability improvements.

Next stop: 6.9.1! And that’s a loaded one! Stay tuned! ;)

Here’s a very quick update, just to let you know what’s coming up…

But first, we really recommend that everyone upgrades to version 6.7.6 which has been released a few weeks ago. Version 6.7.7 is also just around the corner. The included auto-upgrade makes it easy to apply any new upgrade.

Also, if you haven’t checked out the skins repository lately, have a look. We released several new skins; for example: the Ark Blog Skin. At this point, we recommend that everyone switches to a modern responsive skin. The selection is wide enough for everyone to find something that suits their needs. And if not, please post some screenshots of what you’d like in the comments here ;)

Then, in October you can expect a first release of b2evolution 6.8.0, which will be packed with lots of improvements and a few new features.

Finally, we are working in parallel on b2evolution 7.0, which will introduce some major new features. Stay tuned! ;)

Just a quick update: this site (b2evolution.net) is now running on b2evolution version 6.6.8-stable.

We will release this version 6.6.8 promptly. Update: now released!

We have also made a lot of progress on the development branch, which is the branch from which we drew version 6.7.0-alpha a couple of months ago… We have added so many things now that we’re not quite sure what the next release will be called, but it will be an "alpha" again ;)