Ladies & gentlemen,

Though we're a little bit ashamed it took so long, we're also proud to announce that we're finally back with a brand new release and a load of brand new features.

The much anticipated Phoenix release is now available at SourceForge, you can get it here.

The main new features are:

• File manager
• Mailing lists/Subscriptions for new posts and/or new comments
• Group based blog permissions with presets for new users
• Enhanced user interface

The multiple domain support is still experimental and will work well only under specific conditions (you'll have to use the forums for more on that...)

More below...

This release is a real collaborative work with at least 15 contributors involved, some developping, some testing, some debugging, some validating... Many thanks to all of them!

This is an ALPHA release. This means it's far from perfect... but still, we already like it, use it, dig it... as it is! We only recommend that you upgrade if you are comfortable with patching bugs manually in case of need. Otherwise you should probably wait for the Phoenix Beta or Final.

This is a FEATURE release, not a PERFORMANCE release. So we don't recommend that you upgrade if you are running a production site with several thousands of users, of blogs or tens/hundreds of thousands of pges served every day. The "Dawn" release will still do a better job for this. This is not a promise, but we expect to come back to similar performance levels with version 1.7 or 1.8 .

Read more »

b2evolution is now integrated in the "unstable" release of Debian and should soon enter "testing".

To install an up to date version b2evolution on your debian system, update your package list:
apt-get update
then, simply run:
apt-get install b2evolution

For more information or download the package manually, visit http://packages.debian.org/b2evolution

Thanks a lot to Arnaud Guiton who created and maintains this package.

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

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.

b2evolution version 0.9.0.12 "Amsterdam" has been released. Get it from the downloads section.

This is a maintainance release only. It ships with the following:

• Security fixes, especially this one.
• Minor bug fixes
• Many many locale/translation updates and additions. (Translations are now available for the following locales: cs_CZ, da_DK, de_DE, es_MX, es_VE, fi_FI, fr_FR, gl_ES, hu_HU, it_IT, ja_JP, lt_LT, nb_NO, nl_NL, pt_BR, pt_PT, sk_SK, sv_SE, th_TH, tr_TR, tr_TR_utf-8, zh_CN, zh_CN_utf-8, zh_TW.)
• A brand new skin: "natural pink"

It is only necessary to upgrade if you haven't applied the latest security patch yet. However, upgrade is recommended for everyone (it is very very easy, especially if you are already running a 0.9.0.x version).

This release is aimed at maximum stability, thus there are no major new features in this release. New features will ship in version 0.9.2 (or whatever it will be numbered). We cannot give an estimate release date for 0.9.2 yet, but you can get the new features from CVS if you really can't wait.

0.9.2 will shift the focus to modularity and scalability.

Important: you will also need to apply this patch.

We are planning a new service release (version 0.9.0.12) pretty soon. It will include the following:

• Security updates;
• Localization updates and new locales like Slovak, Turkish and Thai;
• Maybe new skins... BTW, do you know there is still a skin competition underway where you could send in your own personal work? We'd love to see it :) .

Note: major new features are developed against another branch in CVS and will *not* be included in 0.9.0.12.

Note 2: this release will be fully compatible with 0.9.0.11.