b2evolution/b2evolution 6.0.0-alpha.1

6.0.0-alpha

on GitHub

Official info page for this release: http://b2evolution.net/downloads/6-0-0-alpha (updated even after release)

This is an alpha version. This means it is meant mainly for evaluation and testing.

The main thing to know about alpha versions is that anything might change from one release to the next and there might not be a clean upgrade path from one alpha to the next.

However, this version works! It still needs a lot of visual polishing and there are inconsistencies that need to be fixed. Basically what we mean is: don't judge it by its current looks, many things will still change, but if you like it as is... it's up to you to decide if you feel confident about running it on production.

Installation

Our easy ((installation-guide)) will provide step by step instructions to get you started with b2evolution.

Upgrade

At this time we don't recommend you upgrade a stable version to this alpha version. However if you still want to proceed, see: [[upgrading-existing-installation]].

UTF-8 migration

One very important change in this version is that it works 100% on UTF-8. This change means that all the locales (a.k.a language packs) you want to use with this version must be in UTF-8 format (charset). Also you should migrate your database to UTF-8 with the provided tool in the b2evolution installer. The benefit of this change is that all the charset conversion headaches that have been observed on previous versions should be eliminated (forever ;).

Other changes

Note: this list is NOT COMPLETE. The actual codebase contains more new features which have not been documented yet.

• Structural changes:
  • There is no /blogs/ folder in the distribution ZIP file any more. Everything has been moved up one level. This makes it easier to just upload the ZIP file to the server and unzip it in place.
  • We're now officially starting to call everything "collections" instead of "blogs", because in many cases it hasn't much to do with a blog any more: Forums, Online Manuals, Photo Galleries...
  • The installer will now install an additional collection of type "Main" as collection #1. This notably displays a Home Page for the site as well as the "About" page for the site. 5Of course you don't have to use this if you want to continue as before).
• Collection/Blog Settings:
  • Moved access related settings to the General settings tab of a collection. The first settings you will see is who can see the collection and where.
  • Private collections/blogs: it is now possible to require users to log in before displaying a collection. Furthermore it's possible to give different memberships to different collections to make each collection accessible to different groups of users.
  • New search implementation that does not just look into posts but also looks into comments, category names and tags. It also ranks better matches with scores in order to present most relevant searches first.
• Skins:
  • Enhanced site skin.
  • Enhanced "Photo Albums" skin. It now contains a custom "category directory" page that can group your albums by category -- you can use this a stour front page. Also many visual enhancements.
  • Enhanced "Bootstrap Blog" skin. For example you can now choose to have the side bar on the left or on the right. You can also use it in single column mode.
  • New "Bootstrap Manual" skin based on the bootstrap framework.
  • New "Bootstrap Main" skin destined to handle a site Home Page as well as common site functions (log in, messaging, user profiles, etc.)
• Widgets:
  • New Breadcrumb Path widget.
  • New Content Hierarchy widget (for use in Manual skins).
• Post editing:
  • Updated TinyMCE editor
  • No more iframe for attached files. Attaching new files is now smoother and does not open a separate window.
  • Different blocks of the edit screen can be collapsed and expanded by a single click.
  • The Images & Attachments area can be resized with a mouse drag.
  • Extended: [[image-short-tag]]
  • New: [[file-short-tag]]
  • New: [[inline-short-tag]]
• Comments:
  • Option to display/hide rating summary
• Messaging:
  • It's now possible to configure renderer plugins to apply to private messages.
• User accounts:
  • Invitation only access: instead of letting users register freely you can create invitation codes that are required to register. Different invitation codes can grant access to different user groups and different user levels.
  • Users now see a "successful registration" welcome message upon registering.
  • Notifications about closed accounts now say how long the account was active (time elapsed since account creation)
  • Tool to crop profile pictures.
  • Admin tool to forbid certain pictures from being used as the main picture (useful when you require the main picture to be a mugshot but still allow cartons or other pictures as supplemental pictures. When you forbid a picture from being a main picture, the user cannot put it back as his main picture.)
  • Temporary lock on user accounts in case of brute force password attack.
• Analytics:
  • Improved Goals feature. Item displays (disp=single or disp=page) can trigger goal hits. Now it's possible to associate a goal to an item directly from the edition form. Hits will be tracked on each goal every time their associated pages are displayed to a user through disp=single or disp=page.
• Marketing & Email campaigns:
  • Introducing [[email-capture-quick-registration-widget]]
  • Redesigned email templates (with inline styles) so they display better on webmail clients such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.
• System:
  • System log for auditing.
• Other:
  • New param() function which can validate arrays
  • Changed wording of some back-office features to make things easier to understand.
  • Aggregated collections get their permissions checked based on permissions of each source collection.

If you think this is cool, please feel a friend or share it somewhere online. Thank you for spreading the word.