Wow! So 2003 is over already? That was fast! :|
Well... at least it has been a great year for b2evolution. And I believe that many improvements to this little piece of software would not have been possible without the many contributors who have added features, tested early versions, tracked down bugs, made suggestions for improvements, made skins, documented features, translated language files, hosted the site, provided support in the forums or even financial support via paypal...
Thus I'd especially like to thank here (in nearly alphabetical order): Brian, Candle, Daniel, Graham, Jordan, Jason, Marius, Michel, Ron, Sabrina, Sakichan, Simon, Topanga, Travis, Tristan and Vegar! (And now I fear I forgot someone, please forgive me for that :oops: the comments are yours! ;) )
Last but not least, really big thanks to all of you using b2evolution and promoting the software, essentially through the display of that little b2evo logo on your blog.
Let's hope we find enough time in 2004 to go twice as far as we did this year! ;)
Anyways, I hope 2004's going to work out great for you! ;)
Wow I had a funky day! XX(
This morning, as I was thinking about packaging a new b2evolution version, waiting for the storm outside to calm down... after 5 or 6 alerts, my UPS died on me.
How frustrating! This device is supposed to let you work uninterrupted, no matter how bad the thunderstorm is playing with your power supply :> Well... this time it didn't go that way. Thunder, beep, beep, beep, woosh, silence... thunder again, silence... black screen... :(
It seems to be dead... definitely... no matter how much I try to reload the battery and how little power I try to get from it. At least it has served me well for almost 7 years ;) (yeah I checked the fuse too :b it actually still works fine... until you unplug the power :)) )
That was just for starters... the storm didn't stop until 6 pm, the basement and garage got flooded, roads were closed, I got trapped in a commercial zone without a way home were I wouldn't have to drive through 60 centimeters of mud and water... Eventually I found a way around, but of course, everybody was trying to go that way so we got all stuck it a wet dirty muddy traffic jam under the pourring rain with absolutely no news because the radio relays were down... probably hit by the storm too! :no:
Now the weather seems temporarily calmed down and I'm slowly getting dry... but they announced the same fun for tomorrow again... even recommending people do not got to work! XX(
It's going to be a funky autumn I guess... Actually, running a development PC without an UPS this time of the year in this area is almost suicidal. So I'll probably be off during the next storm again, until I get to buy a new UPS.
By the way, this is the perfect opportunity for me to bring to your attention that you can support b2evolution development by donating a few bucks using the Paypal link you can see on the site. :roll: A new UPS costs about $100 / 100€. So even $5 / 5€ will be a significative contribution! ;)
Well anyway, last but not least: when it happens to you and you fry an UPS, remember to dispose it properly, recycling the batteries! Thanks for your attention. :P
There's this other irritating myth about b2evo that says we are "carelessly" integrating hacks.
Would you please "care" to look at the code before relaying that? >:XX
As a matter of fact, as of today, b2evo has integrated as many as 0 (yes, that reads ZERO!) hacks on top of b2 version 0.6.1.
All new features have been developed specifically for b2evo. We are actually considering including some hacks, but we haven't done it yet since we are talking with the authors about merging them in a clean way into the b2evo codebase. That means the author joining the dev team and integrating the hacks in a manner that is everything but "careless".
b2evolution is actually an evolution of the b2 blog software. Thus, a significant part of the codebase is b2 legacy. As of today, b2 legacy is a little less than 50% of the whole b2evolution code.
Every now & then I read these quite irritating remarks about some other b2 forks supposedly being so much better because their authors are planning to rewrite it from ground up someday. :crazy: Duh!
Beyond the intrinsic irony of this statement, I'd like to explain my position about this: I do not believe the usage value of software lies in its codebase!
Actually, I have experimented the rewriting path myself about 12 years ago. I had developed a piece of software working very well with lots of happy users. However, I decided that having written this software in GfA Basic wasn't good enough and rewrote it from ground up in C!
This was an unvaluable move for me to learn the C language (and a couple of other things I wanted to experiment with, like the GEM environment), but regarding the software, the new version - while significantly nicer - never reached the usage value of the previous one.
The product and the users would have benefited much more from me spending all this time adding new features to the existing codebase instead of reimplementing the same ones differently. However, as a developer, I personnaly benefited more from reimplementation.
See how precisely this translates to b2 and its forks?
Now, please give me a break with this rewriting crap! Anyone talking to you about rewriting doesn't actually care about the community but about himself. :lalala: I don't blame that - we work for free - I just don't want it turned into ridiculous "marketing" arguments.
Also, please don't get me wrong: I am not saying the legacy b2 codebase was all clean. The b2evo dev team has actually rewritten more than 50% of it in order to achieve better maintainance. But we don't advertise that. We take far more pride in providing new features on a regular basis. :P
b2evolution 0.8.5.3-beta is available. You can download it here.
Here are some highlights for this release:
-
Complete b2evo bookmarklet and sidebar;
-
You can now switch to another blog in the middle of a post and preserve all your current edits (uses javascript);
-
Comment spam prevention (vig-rx syndrome): blocks comments and posts containing blacklisted URLs (if you have had vig-rx posting on your blog, you know why you need this ;) ) This also applies to referrer spam.
- New post statuses: protected, private and deprecated
- New login/registering system. You can login directly on whichever function page you want. b2edit.php, b2browse.php, b2stats.php, etc… pick the backoffice homepage you prefer.
- New template functions: user_login_link(), user_register_link(), user_logout_link(), user_admin_link(), user_profile_link()
- Passwords are now stored encrypted in the database (by Swirlee)
- Security pacthes (by Sakichan)
- Smilies are now displayed in their correct chosen order. They are not displayed when they are deactivated.
- $allow_cross_posting = 0 will disable cross posting among multiple categories.
- Stats summary.
- Fully configurable directory structure. Spread b2evo all across your site! ;)
At b2evolution's, one of our main concerns is security. While we constantly keep securing the legacy b2 codebase while developing new versions, we felt it was appropriate to release a security upgrade for our latest stable release (0.8.2).
We are pleased to announce availablility of version 0.8.2.2.
b2evolution 0.8.2.2 is a maintainance release intended to fix security issues discovered after release of version 0.8.2.
This release includes some fixes against XSS and SQL injection vulnerabilities.
All b2 users up to 0.8.2 are encouraged to upgrade their installation. These vulnerabilities most likely also affect other b2 forks but we have not checked them yet.
Vulnerabilities were also fixed in user-customizable skins, so users will need to reflect the changes to their own skins. Contributed skins on evoSkins.org may have the same vulnerabilities, but we have not investigated them yet.
Acknowledgements: