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0.7x End Of Life
(News)
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From 1st October 2008
PostNuke 0.7x will only be available as a download package from code.zikula.org. New modules and themes for the .7x series will no longer be accepted into the Extensions repository after this date, and devlopers are encouraged to convert their extensions to Zikula 1.0. Any security updates to 0.7x modules will still be accepted in the repository.
From 1st January 2009
Official support for 0.7x will no longer be available. The extensions database and support forum will be archived, and new submissions will no longer be accepted.
On 1st July 2009
Official support for the 0.7x series of PostNuke ends on this date. Security fixes will no longer be provided, though it will still be possible to upgrade a 0.7x website to the latest version of Zikula. In addition, the download packages will be removed from trac and PostNuke 0.7x
Generated on June 6, 2008.
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Development Update, 2008-01
(News)
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.8 Final: the next step after RC3
Since the release of RC3, already a lot of bugfixes have been committed to the repository. The developers have agreed to address all new features to the .9 tree, where the two major changes (UTF-8 and gettext, see below) are already in active development. This should result in much shorter release cycles (and earlier release dates) also, and give module developers much more clarification on what to change in order to make their module work under the new major release. If needed, an final bugfizing weekend may still be organised for .8 final.
The upgrade from .764 installations on certain systems has been improved, by increasing the memory_limit to 64M. However, this only works for php version 5.2.1 and above.
Upgrading to .8 together with some 3rd party modules may raise problems when the modules upgrade process is not failsafe for .8 or if the upgrade function uses core functions of modules that are not available yet. Therefore the upgrade of 3rd party modules in general is avoided by following a white list of core modules.
Most site-specific data can already be easily overridden using the /config and /themes directories. The Multisites module however still needs some futher thought on the best way of running multiple sites from a single install. One method having multiple unrelated (i.e. non table sharing) sites of a single install would be to have config/site1, config/site2 etc., this will be postponed to a next release.
The Tour module is now in a state where it can be translated to other languages as well. Just translate the templates and put them in a subdir with the appropriate language abbrevation, all within the pntemplates directory.
MultiCategorization introduction and issues since
As earlier announced, a last fix for supporting MultiCategorization has been added to the core just before the release of RC3. Since those changes, another small fix was then required to be fully backwards compatible. On the module-devs list, the devs have discussed a lot on how to solve these issues. Chances are great that if the new (already committed) patches do not solve the problems, MultiCategorization might be postponed to later versions in order to fully test the new features.
For more information on MultiCategorization, visit this thread in the forum.
DOM extension to use correct paths in JavaScript
Some javascripts, eg. the lightbox, need to know the path to the system and the entrypoint as well (which can be configured in the settings), otherwise they may fail in case of short urls being enabled. Since dynamic javascript creation might be a performance problem, some inline javascript is added to the pagevars to extend the DOM:
- document.location.entrypoint: will be set to what is configured to be the entrypoint
- document.location.pnbaseURL: will point to the result of pnGetBaseURL();
Any ideas on how to make his more unobtrusive are very welcome!
PostNuke Upgrade Distribution
In previous articles and posts, the term '.8 upgrade pack' was used to represent a full .8 package, including 3rd party modules, to upgrade to .8 from an existing .764 installation. However, the term 'upgrade pack' is not quite correct and misleading, because it implies to be an upgrade package with changed files only, while the main parts remain as-is. The transition between .764 and .8 requires a complete exchange of all files, so the so called upgrade package is a complete distribution.
Now it remains what modules should be in an upgrade distribution, to be able to fully upgrade an existing .764 installation, including new versions of 3rd party modules. These include Downloads 2.2, pnMessages, Polls 2.0, bbcode / bbsmile, Weblinks, EZComments and MultiHook at least. This might need some additional testing with certain versions also.
Core changes and additions in the .9 tree
Mark has already overhauled some core API methods and calls. All systems modules are now using the Renderer Class instead of pnRender. Also, a first pass has been committed in changing all pn* function calls to new object method calls. For example, pnModGetInfo is replaced with ModuleUtil::getInfo and pnSecGenAuthKey is replaced with SecurityUtil::generateAuthKey.
For those who did not know: A class pnCompat.php still includes most oldstyle API calls for backwards compatibility.
GetText and Default DB Charset
Bernd is progressing rapidly on integrating gettext in de development tree, and has added po-files for all core modules. The required PHP version for .9 has already been set to a minimum of 5.1.6, and since version 5.0, MySql supports different character sets and corresponding collating orders. To run an application in UTF-8 (unicode) it is not sufficient to change the character set for PN; we needed to set the database encoding (actually server and client) to UTF-8 as well.
A user who wishes to run his site in multiple languages, needs to decide the database encoding at installation time. The default is UTF-8, because the current iso-8859-1 is restricted to too few language combinations. UTF-8 is a 'no-worry' setting because it will work with any language (as long as it is UTF-8 encoded.
This change is $PNConfig['DBInfo']['default']['dbcharset'] = 'utf-8';
To cache or not to cache, that's the question
Also discussed on the devs-list is the current (and future) state of output caching within PostNuke. Why should any application repeat the same processing tasks on a item that hasn't changed?
Not caching anything is fine if one has got infinite resources to throw at a site (and even then there are limits). But in reality there are finite resources and you need to take steps to ensure that those resources are effectively used. One method for that is not wasting precious resources repeating the same tasks time after time.
The key is effective cache management. Currently we put too much load onto the module to handle it's own caching. Once you then
Generated on March 2, 2008.
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PostNuke 0.8 RC3 Released
(News)
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PostNuke 0.8 RC3 Upgrade Pack Download
Download (ZIP)
MD5: 02629a822154f9f88a72ebea7f562470
SHA-1: 7ca9de7e7285778122e3d711c1b48f9ee4342396
Download (TAR.GZ)
MD5: eaf730995aec0acebca26f62a9f5ec98
SHA-1: 2245191875cb66d4c2cbda769321b3f0ccb7dc33
PostNuke 0.800 RC3 Core Download
Download (ZIP)
MD5: 95000958fa40f442a40282db5aae1799
SHA-1: aaa57406204bdc1220a6768d6de2021736ffe1cc
Download (TAR.GZ)
MD5: e563098769d0ce448c31a39a92f9b0ab
SHA-1: 5fe83c58707de118a28ba0dd8c72138706d90388
PostNuke 0.800 RC3 ValueAddons Download
Download (ZIP)
MD5: 195a63ac59c1ddce7507ad50b21032d1
SHA-1: 8f64584642ea3959b13a98b1649dfe50921ffa31
Download (TAR.GZ)
MD5: f7436f01187f81f34eb80c4959d46d37
SHA-1: 5ebce8c82fa1599ad81b3bce771d418b6e496329
Release Highlights
There are a number of improvements in RC3 over RC2, these include an enhanced upgrade script, the new Tour module and some last minute categories module improvements.
New Upgrade Script
The two upgrade scripts, upgrade76.php and upgrade.php have now been combined into a single file. In addition to this, a number of interface improvements have been made to make the process of upgrading your .7x series websites simpler and more reliable. The new script also solves some long standing bugs with the update proceedure, so we invite anyone who had problems with the upgrade proceedure previously to try again with this new version.
Tour Module
In an attempt to reduce the learning curve when first starting with PostNuke, a new module has been developed to introduce you to this new release of PostNuke. It provides a first time tour of PostNuke, introducing you to common terms like block, module and theme with which new users may not be familiar and also gives some basic hints and tips on where to start.
For more experienced users, there is a 'New In PostNuke 0.8' section, where you can discover more about this release of PostNuke, and a distribution tour, where authors of distributions can describe the purpose of their package and how it benefits you as a site administrator. The distribution tour page is stored in docs/distribution/tour_page1.htm, and an example is included in this release. This file is not intended to be viewed outside the Tour module, as the Tour module adds navigational elements around the page.
Finally, module and theme developers can include tours for their module, to introduce users to key features, or help them familiarise themselves with the basics. It is intended to serve as a crash course for all modules - be they complicated (such as pagesetter) or more simple (such as the Pages module). Certain modules have hidden features about which a user may not necessarily be aware, and we hope that the tour module will allow module developers to better promote the features their modules contain.
The tour module supports multipage tours for all modules - simply store tour_page1.htm and any subseqeuent pages in modules/yourmodule/pndocs/, or themes/yourtheme/docs.
Categories Improvements
The categories module received a few last minute improvements in SVN just before the release of RC3. These improvements are
Generated on February 20, 2008.
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Short Status Update
(News)
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This problem is now solved and in the same action Frank Schummertz overhauled the upgrade's usability - and he merged the .7 upgrade and the .8MS upgrade into one file. So there's only one upgrade.php for all.
Simon Birtwistle together with some guys from the support team wrote a tour module that is supposed to explain the basic functions to first time Postnuke users.
All this is now in the SVN and will be release as RC3 ASAP.
As we are all pretty busy these days, I won't promise it for tomorrow but ASAP. ;-)
Generated on February 13, 2008.
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A Warm Welcome to Our Newest Member, Mateo Tibaquirá Palacios
(News)
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Welcome Mateo, tell us a little about yourself. Who are you,
where are you from, and what do you do?
My complete name is Néstor Mateo Tibaquirá Palacios, but I prefer to be called Mateo. I'm from Colombia, a very beautiful country with some horrible problems; balanced, eh? I live in Popayán, where I'm finishing Electronic & Telecommunications Engineer Studies with an emphasis in Telematics (Information and Communications Technology). I chose Telematics because I like to program. Growing up, I did not have a computer, and from the distance I hated the idea of using a command line console. Now, it's different; I love my Ubuntu with the Yakuake console; and Eclipse PDT rocks!
At the University, I discovered that I had sufficient skills to write software. I began programming in C++ and Java some time ag
Generated on January 26, 2008.
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Bug-Fixing Weekend - A Review
(News)
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started with 65 bugs and 20 patches. After a brief evaluation some of them were moved to .81 or .9 and we started fixing the rest.
Saturday afternoon we still had the number of 65 bugs - because the testers were as busy as the programmers. And even all through the Sunday this number followed us.
All in all we were able to fix ~50 bugs and we are down to 44 open bugs - some of them are partly feature requests and thus are postponed till later versions. The is no priority 5 bug - only 2 upgrade related priority 4 bugs are left. They are regarded as showstoppers and are assigned to Mark West who will fix them in the next few days. So if you want to test wour modules with .8 - pick up the latest SVN version.
While most programmers tried to fix .8 bugs some others worked on their modules: Marco Kundert is in his last throes of his work on pagemaster - a full port of pagesetter to .8 techniques. Jörn and I worked on the next version of "Content". It has pretty much grown but as Jörn fixed some issues in pnForms along the way, we can not release this version before we have either a new RC or a final of .8.
The team is currently discussing if we need another RC or if this is going to be the final. It is only a matter of weeks unt
Generated on January 15, 2008.
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Postnuke .8 RC2
(News)
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state of the SVN and contains compared to RC1 a lot of bug fixes, a rewritten and simplified categories module and an improved upgrade for users of Postnuke .764.
Downloads
There are 3 packages available:
The core pack contains only the bare system and no content modules. It's supposed to serve as the basis for a new site. So you only have to upload all the modules you personally need.
.zip
.tar.gz
The value addons contain all the content modules from .7x in their latest version fit for .8. So if you need Quotes or FAQ for your site, this is the place to find them.
.zip
.tar.gz
The upgrade pack contains everything you need to update an existing .764 site. It is the core pack and the value addons in one package. Please note: DO NOT UPGRADE YOUR LIVE SITE.
This is still not a final release and is not supposed to be used in live enviroments. If you intend to upgrade your site with the final version you should test the upgrade with the RC2 and a
local copy of your .764 site.
.zip
.tar.gz
Please test!. The more you test now with the RC2 and the more bugs you report, the less trouble you will have with the final version.
Checksums
MD5 Checksums
6cf82ee1883136c4c0bf69e13f1d91ba PostNuke-0.800-RC2-FULL.tar.gz
dd7f4b50e4ddfdbd3d96b017287f1a7c PostNuke-0.800-RC2-FULL.zip
6ebf2a51234a6401b7c96c89781d7165 PostNuke-0.800-RC2-CORE.tar.gz
14e65ef97d88470e0080c8e9538c9147 PostNuke-0.800-RC2-CORE.zip
89a6d51fa3f10286b09c29ea312ff7c9 PostNuke-0.800-RC2-ValueAddons.tar.gz
e06a81aec7e50292dfd63fd40a7c88b9 PostNuke-0.800-RC2-ValueAddons.zip
SHA1 Checksums
dd75378f3fa87df7b4b827e74adc0e162c29e861 PostNuke-0.800-RC2-FULL.tar.gz
2de3a2132265b920ab5333f6d2ec692e1c3061e1 PostNuke-0.800-RC2-FULL.zip
90ee7897b7abf29a4a136029823cb8a337a4076f PostNuke-0.800-RC2-CORE.tar.gz
376ae9f296c2533965d95972ddf05937a9cae4b4 PostNuke-0.800-RC2-CORE.zip
de878d7472ae9d2fc54bcf7322cbd5e8df015e32 PostNuke-0.800-RC2-ValueAddons.tar.gz
78ba886356e44da4798abf9577ab45b68756c741 PostNuke-0.800-RC2-ValueAddons.zip
Notice
The upgrade will only work for .764 sites. If your site is based on an older version this is the time to start your upgrade. If you have any questions about the update, visit the forums.
There will be no major changes from RC2 to the final release. The RC is bug fix only. If you intend to write modules, themes
Generated on December 12, 2007.
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RosterMaster(PostNuke) 0.97 and TaskMaster(PostNuke)x .xx
(News)
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only that, but the same guild or clan can also have different rosters for the different servers of the different games they play.
You will also be able to create rosters from either single user groups, or groups of user groups, as well as rosters of the entire user base (for controlled sites). If all works as I would like it to, you will be able to have a roster of user groups that acts like (using the above gaming environment example) another roster of that particular guild.
As should be obvious by now, roster objects will not be limited to any one 'Guild' as the last RosterMaster was and one can build many different roster objects based on many different roster needs.
The current architecture (NOT final) looks like this (I won't claim this is the best setup, but it works with my current aspirations):
ObjectTable MemberTable User(assoc.)Table
ObjectID(prime) ---------- ObectjID(idx) rmUID(prime)
ObjClass MemberID(prime) --------- MemberID(idx)
Name Name pnUserID
etc... etc. etc.
The ObjClass field of the Object Table is a suffix for the module object class called. In the case of Everquest II I used 'EQ2' as the value and named my classes PNRosterMasterEQII and PNRosterMasterEQIIArray calling them with a combination of DBUtil::selectFieldByID([ObjectClass by ObjID) and Loader::loadClasFromModule() with a derived php string as the 'base_obj_type'.
Along with this is a vars table with API functions that work identical to PostNukes' pMod[Get|Set|Del]Var() but requires an ObjID instead of modname so that different sets of vars can be associated to each roster object.
The logging functionality will also be ObjID oriented, and as such care must be taken when setting up logging as to avoid unnecessarily bloated log tables. Accordingly all loging will be set by default to 'off' except in the case of an upgrade from RosterMaster(PostNuke)0.96.
RosterMasters current status is a working upgrade script along with all the functionality of the 'main' RosterMaster display (although the func is now display (ya I'm learning)) for Everquest II. This includes table header reverse sort as well as advanced sort allowing two fields to be sorted in individual directions. The rest is forms and options. Once the EQII class is fully functional I'll begin to set up the other classes and refine the API.
My vision here is to have RosterMaster act as an extensible roster module suitable to organizing and maintaining roster and roster member profiles in association with, or indifferent to, the user base with consideration of user groups.
TaskMaster has the same goals but with reference to levels of accomplished tasks,
All of this has been made possible via PostNukes' 'adambaum' pre-release... this module will not work with anything prior and WILL BE COMPLETELY UNSOPPORTED until the adambaum release (other than beta testing).
Once the EQII class has been made fully functional I'll commit the project to the current PostNuke NOC project SVN for beta testing.
RosterMaster(PostNuke)0.97 and TaskMaster(PostNuke)x.xx naming policy will be dependent on the official release name of the adambaum
Generated on September 25, 2007.
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PostNuke .8 RC1 Released
(News)
-
PostNuke 0.800 RC1 Core Only Download
Download (ZIP)
MD5: 17d7f2eb16bf4dd886695adefab0e1f5
SHA-1: 624dcb1b29c17150e341878c727ddac83fadeb54
Download (TAR.GZ)
MD5: 9807fe2f3e0ef9f7fa88a3bbb0426815
SHA-1: 354edfc9eff87f77713bc1750cdc77144fcf0bff
PostNuke 0.800 RC1 Full Package Download
Download (ZIP)
MD5: 15718c1d68223bf5fc69b144666741f8
SHA-1: e1901b3d06dce1b82f2dfcde4d2da74e7afb9cf8
Download (TAR.GZ)
MD5: 1d983e5fd18907022fbec598c4ae7111
SHA-1: afb25ef625ce6e1564c40faf1cb29b3c1ea0ee13
PostNuke 0.800 RC1 ValueAddons Download
Download (ZIP)
MD5: 38879b481640289b7b6a605af41638a1
SHA-1: aa10e8f79d038b667aa8638347d3d12a999d8e99
Download (TGZ)
MD5: 4adc34945ae0cf42b3f96408bd21d17c
SHA-1: d4f80e0478bef1721eb29484024a9ed7a1a2e025
Please feel free to use the article below to publicise PostNuke in any web development communities you belong to. It is also published here on community.postnuke.com.
Simon BirtwistleHammerHead
About PostNuke
The PostNuke Application Framework provides a high performance, secure and feature complete framework which both website administrators and web developers can use to great effect in creating unique and attractive websites. PostNuke can be used as a CMS, adapted to blogging, ecommerce or community websites, or for more abstract tasks. It is easily adaptible, extensible and can handle situations in which performance and security are paramount. In this way, PostNuke is a reliable and robust choice for any website administrator.
The most recent version of PostNuke is 0.8 RC1, which represents a feature complete 0.8 version. Once the release candidates have undergone full testing and any remaining bugs are fixed a full release will be made available. This release will be suitable for live websites, however in the meantime RC1 is suitable for testing and development work.
Highlights For Website Administrators
The 0.8 release is more polished and up to date than ever before. With the new libraries for developers, new features should be faster and simpler to develop, reducing deployment costs. PostNuke 0.8 can be adapted to almost any need, from blogs to community websites and new third party modules are being developed all the time, constantly improving what PostNuke has to offer.
Additionally PostNuke 0.8 has a focus on the latest standards: XHTML compliance, Section 508 and Accessibility, and further enahncements have been made to both security, performance and usability.
With all core modules now templated, PostNuke 0.8 is designed to be cached, providing a huge performance boost over dynamically generating every page. Furthermore, with the templating system applied to all core modules designers will find it easier than ever to create a unique look to their websites. Gone are the days of standard 3 column layouts - PostNuke 0.8 includes new themes which are CSS, and not table, based. The new Xanthia theme engine is easier to use and performs better than ever before, while including an upgrade feature making it easy to import Xanthia themes from previous PostNuke versions.
For website administrators, this is the best PostNuke release yet, combining compliance with the latest standards and constantly improving features.
Highlights For Web Developers
The 0.8 release provides an Application Framework to allow rapid development of web solutions using the now stable PostNuke core. This allows third party developers to use the wide range of included API and utility libraries to create their own modules and extend the feature set PostNuke already provides.
Of these libraries, one of the most substantial is DBUtil, providing a cross compatible interface to the database. Selecting, updating and deleting data can all be achieved in one line, and DBUtil, combined with ADOdb will automatically create a cross compatible query for whatever database system is in use. PostNuke .8 has been tested with PostGreSQL, and further databases will be supported in future versions.
Other key features are site wide categories, supported through integration with DBUtil, the PostNuke Forms Framework for HTML forms, and other object based APIs. All of these are new since the 0.7x series and ensure third party development is both quicker and easier, and that compatibility with future versions is maintained.
For web developers, PostNuke will provide an attractive option when searching for a framework upon which complex web solutions
Generated on July 17, 2007.
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PHP Projects Join Forces To Go PHP 5
(News)
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The Symfony, Typo3, phpMyAdmin, Drupal, Propel, and Doctrine projects have all announced
that their next release after February 5, 2008 will require PHP version 5.2 as part of a
coordinated effort at GoPHP5.org, and have issued an open invitation to any other PHP
projects and applications, both open source and proprietary, that want to participate in the
effort.
Most PHP-based web applications today run in both PHP version 4 and PHP version 5. PHP
4 was released in 2000, and quickly cemented itself as one of the dominant web development
languages. Version 5 was released in 2004 with dramatic improvements in functionality, but
adoption has been slow due mostly to the "chicken and egg" problem that accompanies many
new platform releases.
"Most of the PHP developers I talk to want to use PHP 5 but can't because so many web
hosts offer PHP 4 by default," said Larry Garfield, a Drupal developer and one of
GoPHP5.org's founders. "The hosts won't upgrade until projects do, but projects won't
upgrade until the hosts do. That has made a lot of projects reluctant to be the first to drop
support for PHP 4, so we've decided that we will all be first."
By pre-announcing plans to require PHP 5.2 in upcoming software versions in 2008, GoPHP5
hopes to provide web hosts with the incentive to upgrade their servers to newer, more stable,
more feature-rich versions of PHP as well as sufficient time to do so. Users that are already
using current versions of participating projects won't be left out in the cold, either. All involved
projects will continue to support current releases on PHP 4 for their normal life cycle, giving
both users and hosts time to plan and implement an upgrade.
"The phpMyAdmin project is very enthusiastic to join the GoPHP5 initiative," added
phpMyAdmin's project lead, Marc Delisle. "We see GoPHP5 as a way both to improve our
product's new versions — not always having to add workarounds to remain PHP4compatible
— and improve the experience of our users — by projecting the correct message about the
PHP system itself and its evolution."
PHP 5 offers developers a wide array of features designed to make developing fast, modern
web applications faster and easier. That includes vastly improved XML handling for Web
services, an integrated SQL database called SQLite, better handling of time zones,
dramatically improved security tools, stronger object-oriented functionality, and more.
Many PHP projects already require PHP 5. Encouraging a larger installed base of PHP 5 will broaden the market for those projects as well. PHP is a widely-used general purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development. PHP is one of the leading web development languages in the world, running on a third of the world's web servers. It is the platform of choice for companies from Yahoo to Facebook as well as the most widely available development platform on shared hosting,
which powers millions of web sites world wide.
For more information:
http://gophp5.org/
http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/gophp5.php
http://drupal.org/gophp5
Press Contact:
larry.garfield@gophp5.org
Generated on July 10, 2007.