It is no joy to announce that our beloved forums have been hacked during the week-end. :'(

As much as I can understand why hackers would break into a system and use it, I can hardly understand why they would destroy the existing data as they did here... what good does this do to them? |-|

Anyway, we're currently trying to locate the most recent DB backup... in the meantime, you'll just get a fat error message. Sorry for the inconvenience.

PS: we now upgraded phpBB... of course... I wish I had done before... of course... I should have done it before... of course... I knew I had to do it before... of course I have been warned several times... you can blame me for all that. XX(

All I can say is that once again, b2evo is not a commercial project and no one gets paid for working on it nor maintaining the site. We do that on our free time. We have daytime jobs also. And it happens that the end of the year is a very busy period for businesses... which leaves us less time for b2evo. I've been working 12 hours a day lately... sorry, I can't catch up on my b2evo mail backlog in such a period.

Anyway, I've learned a lesson here...

PS: for those of you interested in more about the phpBB 2.0.10 series of attack, you might want to check this out: http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=8501 (Thx Travis).

b2evolution 0.9.0.11 aka "Paris" bas been released. You can get it from the downloads section.

Why "Paris" you might ask? Well that's because I live nearby the city of light again... ;)

The meat of the new developments has now gone to the 0.9.2 branch, so this is only a service release focused on first class stability and includes the most complete language files ever. It also includes a few other enhancements which were easy to port back from 0.9.2.

This is a recommended upgrade for best stability and security. Moreover, a few little enhancements might make your life easier... (and no, 0.9.2 won't be here next week and no it probably won't be as stable and as secure as this one! :P)

Changes in "Paris" include:

• New locales (fi-FI,en-NZ)

• Updated locales (it-IT, zh-TW,ja-JP...)

• Antispam blacklist checking: (fplanque)

• has been made case insensitive

• when cleaning up, comment text will also be searched in addition to the comment url

• spam filter preview lists display the IP address of the spammer

• Fixed and enhanced weekly archives. They now display the post count and the week number. (fplanque)

• Auto pruning of stats after a given # of days ($stats_autoprune) (fplanque)

• Changed display order in stat summary

• Updated $blacklList and $search_engines

• Minor bug fixes

No configuration/database/skin update is necessary if you upgrade from 0.9.0.10,

EXCEPT:

if you use weekly archive mode, you will need to update the archive list displaying in your skins. In this case, the minimum is to update /skins/_archives.php .

Also, some new features will not be available without updating the conf (files in /conf folder).

I have this (parked) domain b2evo.net registered on Lycos webcenter...

Yesterday I got an (automated) mail offering me a 30 day free test drive of their new service named 1Click!Site. And what can I do with 1Click!Site? Well... I can automatically install applications, the first one listed in the mail being... b2evolution!!! :)) Ain't that ironic?

Anyway, it's nice that there's yet another way to easily set up b2evo. ;)

To celebrate the launch of the b2evolution evoSkins site as well as the highly stable 0.9.0.x "Europe Series" versions of b2evo, a competition has been launched today to find the best evoSkins. The three best evoSkin designers will win 50 €, 20 € and 10 € respectively. The top entries may be included in future releases of b2evolution.

Additionnaly, we are running a competition for alternative back-office (admin interface) styles. The best admin style designer will win 30 €.

Prizes are merely symbolic. Remember b2evolution is non commercial software. Though, anyone is welcome to make a donation to increase the prizes! ;)

How to enter
Any evoSkins and admin styles that are submitted from today will be assumed to be entries for the competition, unless there is a note added stating otherwise, or any of the general rules is not met.

General Rules

• Each designer may submit as many skins and/or admin styles as they wish, but can only win a prize once. If a designer submits many skins/styles that look very similar, the b2evo dev team may decide to only enter the best one into the competition.
• Skins and styles must be new and original. They must not be derived from another existing design, tool or website. You can submit derived work to the skin site but it won't be included in the competetion. Also, please do always refer to the original author(s) in your derived work.
• Designers must release their work under the GNU General Public License.
• Designers must ensure they only include freely distributable graphic elements in their skin/style.
• The skins/styles must be compatible with b2evolution version 0.9.0.10 or above.
• The evoSkin competition will run until 20 different designers have submitted evoSkins meeting the rules.
• The admin style competition will run until 7 different designers have submitted styles meetings the rules.
• The election of the best skins / styles will be made by the b2evo team. A selection of long time and active forum users who have not submitted a design in the competation will also be invited to participate in the jury.
• b2evolution contributors are welcome to submit evoSkins and/or styles for this competition, but they will not be eligible for any prizes.
• Designers should make sure their skin/style contains accurate contact information in order to receive their prize. Prizes that are unclaimed after 28 days of the end of the competition will be dontated to the b2evolution project.
• The prizes will be paid by PayPal only. Currency exchange rates may apply if you do not wish to receive a payment in Euro (€).

The competition may be closed at any time as deemed appropriate by the development team. Any and all decisions are final. These rules may be ammended at any time, with or without any prior notice. For the latest copy of these rules, please see this page: http://b2evolution.net/news/2004/07/16/evoskins_competition . While every effort has been made to insure that all information on this page is accurate, the development team nor anyone associated with b2evolution can be held responsible for any errors that may be included. Remember, no one is making money off of this software, so you shouldn't make any money off of us if a typo makes it through! ;)

And the winners are:

1. l33t_gray by Tara Chen
2. Pop by Piechdibi
3. London by Graham (Prize given to WWF)

No admin skin has been submitted.
The competition is now closed.

A little bug in "Madrid" made it complicated for some users to upgrade. Thus, we decided to release yet another "Europe Series" version: 0.9.0.10 "Copenhagen".

In addition to the annoying bugfix, it also includes a Danish locale, hence the name... ;)

Bonus features for order maniacs and geeks like myself:

• Allow moving of categories between blogs ( conf/_admin : $allow_moving_chapters = true; )

• Allow moving of posts between blogs ( conf/_admin : $allow_cross_posting = 3; )

• Allow redirecting to main blog if post is permalinked through wrong blog ( conf/_advanced : $redirect_to_postblog = true; )

Download here.

PS: if you are successfully running 0.9.0.9 "Madrid" there is really no need to upgrade. It is recommended that all previous versions be upgraded though.

We don't really like to throw out lots of promises here. What we really like instead is to deliver!

However, since we keep getting requests for this in the forums, here's a quick rundown of what we'll be working on this summer:

• Extended plugin system;
• Support of multiple domains through a single software installation;
• Increased user isolation, for example: each user might want to use his own skins and not share them with the others. This also includes additional user and group permissions;
• Better user interface.

Of course these are only the main guidelines; there are also handfuls of little additional features under development... but I think I already made enough promises today. Gotta work on delivery now ;)

Stay tuned!