Okay, this is not yet the much anticipated "Phoenix" release, BUT...

This new release combines the stability of the previous 0.9.0.x releases with massive performance improvements. You may actually have noticed it on the b2evolution.net site itslef. On average "Dawn" runs 2 to 3 times faster than the previous "Amsterdam" release.

If your hosting provider has ever told you your b2evo was using too much resources, you'll definitely want to use this new version!

But that's not all. Even if b2evo was already fast enough for you, you have most probably been annoyed by increased amounts of spam this summer. That's not b2evo specific. Just every site on the planet with any form of feedback is subject to this... Well, we have extended our antispam features by various means in order (a) filter more spam and (b) make the blacklist management somewhat easier.

There's also a few plugin goodies in here but of course, the bulk of new features will be in "Phoenix". There will be an ALPHA release of Phoenix shortly but it won't be as stable as this release. Thus, we strongly recommend everyone upgrades to 0.9.1 without further ado ;) and we're doing our best to get "Phoenix" out.

Download here!

Here's a quick rundown of new features in 0.9.1 "Dawn":

• Scalability: Speed improvements, especially on loaded systems. (fplanque)

• Extended browsing capabilities (fplanque)

• Trackbacks & Pingbacks will be shown on the "last comments" page (fplanque)

• Wacko markup plugin (fplanque)

• WikiLinks plugin (fplanque)

• Antispam: (fplanque)

• Referer spam gets detected early and triggers a "403 Forbidden" error message in order to save resources on the server.

• Removed public statistics in order not to attract referer spam.

• Trying to access public stats triggers a "410 Gone" error message.

• Complete comment text will be searched for blacklisted keywords.

• HTML entities can now be used in blacklisted keywords.

• Restricted URL input into feedback to defeat comment spam.

• Use of rel="nofollow" for feedback author URLs to defeat comment spam

• The antispam blacklist is not displayed by default anylonger if it gets longer than 100 entries (and it will indeed get much longer than that...)

Upgrade information:

• You'll need to run the install script to upgrade your database

• Skins from 0.9.0.x should work in 0.9.1 without modification

Yope, that's right, they did it again! :|

The previous XML-RPC fix may not be secure enough, so...

It is highly recommended you fix you installation by downloading this NEW patch file and unzipping it into you /blogs/b2evocore/ folder. This should overwrite the two following files AGAIN:

• _functions_xmlrpc.php
• _functions_xmlrpcs.php

This patch has been tested on the latest 0.9.0.12 "Amsterdam" release but is believed to work on all 0.9.0.x versions.

The patch will be included in future releases.

By popular demand, here's a preliminary list of the new features and the changes introduced in the "phoenix" ALPHA release...

The main focus of this new version was to remove the b2 legacy code from the evoCore framework in order to move to a more stable, reliable and scalable architecture (with Objects and all the rest...). This was mostly behind the scenes work without immediate features to show off for gratification. However, the new evoCore now allows to add functionnality more quickly and more efficiently.

Anyway, there are already quite a few new features available: (This is by no way a final list!)

• File manager (blueyed)
• Multiple domain support (blueyed, fplanque) (TODO: (cookie/admin) Debugging!)
• Mailing lists: Subscriptions for new posts and/or new comments (fplanque)
• Who's online? (jeffbearer, blueyed, fplanque)
• Email form to contact authors without revealing their email address (jeffbearer, blueyed, fplanque)
• Paged display in antispam (fplanque)
• Improved hit logging (bluyed, fplanque)
• Stats enhanced with Flash charts (fplanque)
• Added options to allow a blog stylesheet or a user stylesheet to override the skin stylesheet. (edgester) (TODO: Only the "custom" skin works with the options at the moment. Other skins must be modified.)
• Lost password: sends a link to allow password changing instead of generating a new password right away (blueyed)
• New setting in the blog's advanced tab for choosing the comment's policy on a per blog basis. You can now choose if you want to allow comments on a blog, if you want to be able to disable them on each post, or if you don't want any comments at all (gorgeb)
• Post editing extensions:
  • Alternative backoffice layout(s) (fplanque) (TODO: get this out of the conf files and make it available in the UI).
  • "Deprecate now" function (fplanque)
• Post browsing extensions:
  • Complete contextual browsing: you can combine several filters: author, month, category, etc (fplanque)
  • Browse by author (fplanque)
  • Calendar: Links to next/prev month/year are only provided if there are posts in that direction (blueyed)
  • Fixed ability to select multiple authors at once (via URL params) (fplanque)
  • Added ability to combine categories in search (fplanque)
  • New URL parameter 'dstart' allows to start browsing at specified date (same fprmat as 'm'). useful with unit = 'days'.
  • New URL parameter 'unit' allows overriding of configuration to select what to display: 'posts' or 'days' (fplanque)
  • Slightly enhanced week handling (weeks start on sunday or monday depending on user locale) (requires MySQL >= 4) (fplanque)
• Post extensions (fplanque)
  • Extra status
  • Post type
  • Popup calendar for dates
  • Assigned to
  • Priority
  • Deadline
  • Counting number of views for each item (template tag $Item->views()) (jeffbearer, blueyed, fplanque)
• Permissions:
  • Group based blog permissions (halton)
  • Extended group permissions (fplanque)
  • Blog permissions presets; Member, Editor, Admin (blueyed, fplanque)
• Packaged plugins:
  • Wacko markup plugin (fplanque)
  • WikiLinks plugin (fplanque)
  • LDAP authentification plugin (blueyed) (TODO: finish)
  • "poplog" (change name) plugin (blueyed)
  • Some previously built-in features have been moved to plugins (fplanque)
• Code:
  • Day at the start of the week moved to properties of the locales (blueyed)
  • Subpaths now include trailing slashes (that was another odd b2 legacy...) (blueyed, fplanque)
  • User profile validity checking (fplanque, blueyed)
• Experimental:
  • Added experimental memcached support. Use at your own risk! Change $use_memcached in conf/advanced.php to activate. Requires phpca memcached client and memcached server. See Memcached Homepage for more info.

Until today, if you wanted to get a glimpse at the new "phoenix" version of b2evolution you had to check it out from the SourceForge CVS. That was hard enough to only let the most motivated users look at hit... :>

Today, we're opening it a little more: just visit the all new demo site set up by Daniel/blueyed...

Check it out at demo.b2evolution.net !

You'll be able to play with it as much as you'd like. B)

You'll also be able to test the latest release from the stable branch (0.9.x) and test it with PHP 4 as well as PHP 5.

Even better: those versions synchronise with CVS every hour. So you know you always look at the very latest code. Very cool stuff Daniel!

What you don't know though, is if someone has already played with it before and mashed up the settings... but as said, it resets every hour, so we have faith it will work for you when you go there. :)

Stay tuned for more! (Yes yes we're working on the alpha release)

PS: We'll update the links on the main site shortly.

After the skins site by Graham and the plugins site by Danny/personman, here comes the new and enhanced Forums site, managed by Whoo and hosted by Nicolas & Elpie from Axian (in New Zealand!).

Whoo has already added quite a few neat features like sub-forums and an RSS feed.

I also want to renew thanks to the whole moderators team: EdB, Topanga, personman, stk, Graham and blueyed.

New forums, same address: forums.b2evolution.net .

It is my pleasure to announce immediate availability of the new sub site: plugins.b2evolution.net B)

That's were you'll be able to find all cool plugins and hacks to extend b2evolution's capabilities. Of course there's only a handful of these registered so far, but feel free to submit new additions at any time.

This site is maintained by Danny Ferguson with the help of Steven Cherry. Both have responded to our call for help and reacted incredibly fast. Thanks a lot guys! :D

More to come soon... ;)