News
Why we make b2evolution (vs. WordPress, Joomla and Drupal)
Some time ago, I got asked why we are making b2evolution. I started writing a blog post about it, but didn’t finish it at the time. Today seems like a good day to round it up ;)
Short answer: we want a system that saves us time on website maintenance. Even more so when you maintain multiple websites: you don’t want to handle upgrades and tuning multiples times.
b2evolution does that by reducing the number of independent pieces that need upgrading and catering. Everything you need is integrated in a single package, including user accounts, forums, private messaging, documentation publishing, and of course: blogs. And that single package can support multiple web sites on a single installation. Finally, it can auto-upgrade itself.
Granted, the amount of integrated features can be a little overwhelming at first, but if you’re in for a rather large and complex website, or better yet: multiple websites, nothing will save you as much time as b2evolution in the long run (meaning: once initial setup is done).
Personally, I have built many websites since I started crafting my first HTML pages at UPenn in 1993. And, throughout the years, I’ve used many different tools to get that done. It started with a plain text editor. That lasted for several years. Then came Dreamweaver. That was a syntax coloring editor with automation functions that made it easy to maintain sites with dozens or even hundreds of interlinked pages. But as the web continued to grow and the amount to publish was growing likewise, I quickly found myself in a situation where I had to publish thousands if not tens of thousands of pages. That is when I had to switch to what we called at the time "a blog engine". Today we call it a CMS: Content Management System.
At the time I chose to use b2 as my blog engine. But, as it turned out, it quickly got abandoned by its author. So I picked it up where he left it, and started extending it under the name b2evolution. Eventually, we rewrote the whole thing. That is the short story. You can find a longer version an dhow it relates to WordPress here.
But today, why continue building our own rather than using another CMS like Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal?
Well, because I tried them and they failed me. They’re probably fine if you want to publish a single website and if that site doesn’t require too many plugins to get to what you need. But in my experience, they quickly require too many different plugins and modules to be installed, upgraded and maintained separately and/or too much custom code, with an even higher maintenance burden. Furthermore, they completely break down if you want to publish many different websites.
The goal with b2evolution was to have everything we needed integrated into a single platform. Install it once. And upgrade it once when there is a new release. No need to upgrade each plugin independently and solve incompatibilities with the other plugins along the way. Beyond that: with a single install of b2evolution, we can actually run multiple sites at the same time. Again a huge time saver on upgrades.
Today b2evolution integrates all the features we need for every new website we create, including user forums, private messaging, email lists, reference materials, multilingual support and of course: multiple blogs.
No other CMS (content management system) is as integrated as b2evolution. No other CMS is as easy to maintain.
b2evolution saves us so much time on website maintenance compared to any other existing solution. In our experience, nothing else even comes close.
That’s why we do it ;)
What could make b2evolution even better?
For a long time b2evolution has insufficient documentation. I believe we hugely improved on that point in the last couple of years. Check out the Online Manual here.
We’ve also been thinking of making feature presentation videos for a long time to show them in action. We have always pushed that to "next month", knowing there was a new user interface coming out soon. That’s an endless loop. At some point we’ll need to just bite the bullet and start cranking out those videos!
Finally, we recognize some users have a hard time getting b2evolution up and running, despite web hosts offering automated install. The auto installers work fine but many times there are other configurations on the web host side that create problems (e-g: Mod Security).
Thus we are wondering if we should offer "b2evolution hosting" ourselves, i-e: a SaaS (Software as a Service) version of b2evolution. That means you could just sign up for a plan that matches your needs and get going. You’d never need to worry about installing b2evolution, about .htaccess files, Linux file permissions, apache modules, upgrades, backups, etc.
Your thoughts on those matters are welcome in the comments below!
Happy May everyone! :)
Original post blogged on b2evolution.
Drupal 8.8.0 is available
What’s new in Drupal 8.8.0?
The last normal feature release of Drupal 8 includes a stable Media Library as well as several improvements to workspaces and migrations. The new experimental Claro administration theme brings a fresh look to site management. This is also the first release to come with native Composer support.
Stable Media Library
The Media Library module allows easy reuse of images, documents, videos, and other assets across the site. It is integrated into content forms and seamlessly fits into CKEditor. You can upload media right from the library and even reuse a combination of uploaded and existing media. Media Library was previously included with Drupal core as a beta experimental module.
New experimental administration theme
The Claro administration theme was added to Drupal core with beta experimental stability. The new theme is clean, accessible, and powerful. Administration pages are more touch-friendly, and color combinations and contrasts are more accessible.
Significant improvements to Workspaces
It is now possible to define hierarchical workspaces (such as preparing a "New Year's" issue for a magazine under the "winter issue", while both receive changes to be deployed). Workspaces can now work with Content Moderation, and path alias changes can also be staged.
Native Composer support included
Drupal 8.8.0 is the first release to include native Composer support without reliance on third-party projects to set up Drupal with its dependencies. New sites can be created using a one-line command.
Migration improvements
The multilingual migration path is still experimental, but has received various updates. This includes handling of vocabulary language settings, term language information, and localization. Modules can now specify whether migrations provided by them are finished or not finished to help audit completeness of available migrations.
New experimental Help Topics module
The existing help system is module based, whereas users intend to complete tasks, not use modules. A new task-based Help Topics beta experimental module has been added to bring in-Drupal help to the next level.
The way to Drupal 9
Drupal 8.8 is the last minor release of Drupal 8 to include significant new features or deprecations prior to 9.0.0. The next (and final) minor release, 8.9, is planned to be a long-term support release that will include all the same changes as Drupal 9.0. It will not contain significant new features compared to 8.8.0, although existing experimental modules may become stable, and small API and UX improvements can still be added.
Drupal 8.9.0's planned release date is June 3, 2020, and our target release date for Drupal 9.0.0 is the same day. Most Drupal 9 preparation steps can be done on your Drupal 8 site, custom code and contributed modules now.
What does this mean for me?
Drupal 8 site owners
Update to 8.8.0 to continue receiving bug fixes and prepare for 9.0.0 (or 8.9.0). The next bug-fix release (8.8.1) is scheduled for January 8, 2020. (See the release schedule overview for more information.) As of this release, sites on Drupal 8.6 will no longer receive security coverage. (Drupal 8.7 will continue receiving security fixes until June 3, 2020.)
Note that all Drupal 8.8.0 sites (new installs and updates) now require at least PHP 7.0.8.
Updating your site from 8.7.10 to 8.8.0 with update.php is exactly the same as updating from 8.7.8 to 8.7.9. Drupal 8.8.0 also has updates to several dependencies. Modules, themes, and translations may need updates for these and other changes in this minor release, so test the update carefully before updating your production site. Read the 8.8.0 release notes for a full list of changes that may affect your site.
Drupal 7 site owners
Drupal 7 is fully supported by the community until November 2021, and will continue to receive bug and security fixes throughout this time. From November 2021 until at least November 2024, the Drupal 7 Vendor Extended Support program will be offered by vendors.
The migration path for monolingual Drupal 7 sites is stable, as is the built-in migrationuser interface. For multilingual sites, most outstanding issues have been resolved. Please keep testing and reporting any issues you may find.
Translation, module, and theme contributors
Minor releases like Drupal 8.8.0 include backwards-compatible API additions for developers as well as new features.
Since minor releases are backwards-compatible, modules, themes, and translations that supported Drupal 8.7.x and earlier will be compatible with 8.8.x as well. However, the new version does include some changes to strings, user interfaces, internal APIs and API deprecations. This means that some small updates may be required for your translations, modules, and themes. Read the 8.8.0 release notes for a full list of changes that may affect your modules and themes.
This release has advanced the Drupal project significantly and represents the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and contributors from various organizations, as well as testers from the Minor release beta testing program. Thank you to everyone who contributed to Drupal 8.8.0!
e107 v2.2.1 Bootstrap CMS Released
After the release of 2.2.0, we have been working on crushing some bugs that did have some impact on functionality.
We have therefore decided to release 2.2.1 sooner rather than later, and recommend everyone to update.
Please note that the 2.2.0 release was a major release with some important notes. Please refer to the previous post for more information on that release, including an overview of numerous great new features which were added!
New features:
- Added new
Newsshortcode{NEWS_AUTHOR_EUF}to retrieve Extended User Fields (e.g.{NEWS_AUTHOR_EUF: field=biography})
Fixes & Improvements:
- Fixed a database check/update issue that occurred when the database name contains a hyphen (
-) (#3800) - Fixed an issue with the Menu Manager preview not loading in some cases (#3815)
- Fixed frontpage button link to Admin Area (#3775)
- Fixed an issue with inserting a new custom page when using PHP 7.3 (#3812)
- Added tablerender id to error pages (#3801)
- Fixed an issue with (un)seralization (#2990)
- Fixed comment author avatar not showing correctly in comment form (#3813)
- Fixed issue in
Downloadplugin with batch userclass options - Fixed issue in
Forumplugin with forum mderator userclass recognition (#3814), with the Userlist shortcode links (#3809), and added placeholder option in{SEARCH}shortcode - Several
Forumtemplate optimizations for Bootstrap 4 (#2969) - Several PHP 7.3 compatibility improvements
For a full list of changes, please go here.
Please see our downloads section to download a copy.
Thank you for continuing to use e107. Please feel free to tell us what you think about e107 in our Gitter chatroom!
Posted May 29, 2019 | 3:00 am
Geeklog v2.2.1 Beta 3
The third beta version of Geeklog v2.2.1 is now [file:file_geeklog-2.2.1-b3 available for download].
Since the Geeklog v2.2.1 Beta 2 release, there have been 72 Commits and 339 file changes. If you are currently testing Beta 1 or 2, please update to this version for testing as there has been a lot of fixes to Geeklog and the Install. We are hoping this will be the last beta release with the next release being the final release of Geeklog v2.2.1, just in time for the holidays.
Please see the article Geeklog v2.2.1 Beta 1 for information on the new features, improvements, and fixes from Geeklog v2.2.0. It also explains how you can help out and get in contact with us if you have any questions.
We would like to encourage you to download this beta version, try it out, and give us your feedback. Please note this version is not meant for live production sites. This is a beta version and it may still contain bugs. If you find any please report them in our Bug Tracker on GitHub.
Depending on what issues are found the development team hopes to have the final release of Geeklog v2.2.1 out in December of this year.
Posted December 3, 2019 | 8:32 amJoomla 3.9.13 Release
Joomla 3.9.13 is now available. This is a security fix release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses two security vulnerabilities and contains over 15 bug fixes and improvements.
Nucleus CMS is Back (Sort of)
Despite project close announcement one and a half years ago, some enthusiastic Japanese developers and users have been maintaining Nucleus CMS core.And today, we are pleased to announce Nucleus CMS 3.70. This is a direct descent of the original Nucleus CMS, supports the same multiple languages.
Major fixes and improvements in this release are including (but not limited to) the following:
- Enforced password security using phpass library instead of md5 hash
- Default character code set is now utf-8, not iso8859-1
- Added new event PreLoadMainLibs
- Fixed vulnerability described in VCE-2011-3760.
- Support for PHP7 (Fixes in installer, embedded wrapper for mysql functions, etc.)
- [New] Duplicate Item button in the item list screen
- [New] Now you can arrange category order
- ... and more!
You are always welcome to post suggestions and questions for Nucleus CMS in the same old English support forum.
Also, all the core and major plugins are now maintained on GitHub. Please feel free to submit issues and of course pull requests.
Beside this code base, LMNucleus a fork from Nucleus by Leo is also available at http://nucleus.slightlysome.net/ and GitHub.
Cheers, and happy blogging!
The Japanese Nucleus TeamPosted January 27, 2016 | 12:24 am
Server Maintenance
Hello,Today, Monday September 23rd from 9:00 PM (UTC) until 11:00 PM (UTC) we will be performing some maintenance on the infrastructure that powers www.phpbb.com and several subdomains of phpbb.com.
This downtime applies to our various sites, including, but not limited to:
https://www.phpbb.com
https://area51.phpbb.com
https://tracker.phpbb.com
https://wiki.phpbb.com
This downtime will not affect any other installation of the phpBB software other than www.phpbb.com. However, the version check in your administration control panel might give a temporary error message.
Many thanks,
The phpBB TeamPosted September 23, 2019 | 9:02 am
Plone welcomes four students for the 2016 Google Summer of Code
We welcome these promising students exemplifying great diversity in geography and topics, and wish them a great Summer of Code!Posted April 24, 2016 | 5:55 amFive Nights at Freddy's 4 Full Version - Feel the fear one last time
Review
Five Nights at Freddy's 4 is the fourth, and last (supposedly) release in the Five Nights at Freddy's saga. Developed and published by Scott Cawthon, this horror game has delighted all the fans of horror games, and has also raised the criticism from those that say that there are too many FNaF games. This time, you are not a security guard fighting for your life against creepy animatronics. Instead, you are a defenseless kid who struggles every night because of his terrifying nightmares (nightmares about creepy animatronics, of course).
Now, animatronics don't kill you, because they are just nightmares, but they can scare you as they have done since forever. Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy have come back, and they have brought new nightmare friends with them. Also, the location is not an office anymore. It takes place in your own room, a room with a bed, two doors, and a dark closet. Each part of the room is dangerous since they are places where the animatronics can hide.
Moreover, the mechanics of the game have significantly changed compared to the previous tree installments in the saga. Now, you do not depend on your vision, or the cameras, because in this release, you don't have them. Now, you have to hear; you have to pay attention to every sound, breath, and laugh, because sound indicates where enemies will come from. It's recommended to play with earphones or with a very high volume. You are free to play with a regular sound volume, but you will not be able to hear your enemies.
Are you ready to say goodbye to your beloved animatronics?
As mentioned, the mechanics have changed. Now, you have nothing more than your senses and a flashlight to defend yourself. You have to control both doors, the closet, and the bed behind you. Animatronics can appear in any of the four places. What you have to do is walk bravely to the doors and the closet, listen carefully and if you hear something, close the door as fast as you can and hold it shut until the sound disappears. In case you don't hear anything, use the flashlight to prevent enemies from coming. The bed at your back has a little Freddy fluffy toy, but sometimes dreadful miniature Freddy's appear, followed by Nightmare Freddy himself. You have to shoo them with the flashlight unless you want Freddy to appear. It can seem easy, but the slightest mistake (using the flashlight when you hear a breath, or not closing the doors in time), will bring an end to the game.
Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy have come back, and they have brought new nightmare friends with them
Talking about your friends the animatronics, when you download FNaF4, you will have to face six of them, eight if you take into account the "nonofficial" ones. You already know Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy (nightmare version) but let me introduce you to Nightmare FredBear and Nightmare (plainly). All the animatronics in nightmare version are decrepit, broken, and especially scary. They have very long sharp teeth and glowing eyes, but Nightmare FredBear and Nightmare have even longer teeth, and they are very dangerous because they are unpredictable. This is especially true of Nightmare, since he is black and semi-transparent. They start appearing on nights 5 and 7, respectively.
Features
In this version, you can check out the main features of Five Nights at Freddy's 4:
- A new story that reveals what happened in the Bite of the 87
- A gloomy mini-game that allows you to skip the first two hours of the nights (if you are successful)
- Nightmare version of the old and well-known animatronics (Bonnie, Freddy, Chica and Foxy)
- 4 new animatronics: Nightmare, Nightmare FredBear, Plushtrap and Nightmare Cupcake (Chica's cupcake can attack you know)
- A new location
- New mechanics based on the sounds
If you like this horror adventure, feel free to visit the developer's official website to discover all the features before you download it.
System Requirements
You can read here the minimum PC system requirements needed to download and play this game:
- Operating System: Windows XP or later versions
- Processor: AMD Athlon, Intel Pentium @ 2GHz or better
- RAM Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Hard Drive Space: at least 1 GB free available
Posted August 20, 2015 | 6:19 am
Re: Settings.php file just got wiped - how could this happen?
It's a known issue with race condition when there is a database error that attempts to write to that file. It is fixed for sure in SMF 2.1Posted December 9, 2019 | 5:55 am
People of WordPress: Jill Binder
You’ve probably heard that WordPress is open-source software, and may know that it’s created and run by volunteers. WordPress enthusiasts share many examples of how WordPress changed people’s lives for the better. This monthly series shares some of those lesser-known, amazing stories. Meet Jill Binder Jill Binder never meant to become an activist. She insists […]Posted December 6, 2019 | 3:27 pmXOOPS PHPMailer Security Patches Released
The XOOPS Development Team is pleased to announce the release of security patches for XOOPS 2.5.8 and XOOPS 2.5.7.2.These patches includes the latest version of PHPMailer to address a serious vulnerability. All XOOPS users are encouraged to update as soon as possible.
Both full distributions and patch files (from the most recent prior release) for both the 2.5.7 and 2.5.8 series are available.
Any users that are running older XOOPS versions are advised to update to XOOPS 2.5.8.1 now.
Get XOOPS 2.5.8.1
Release files are available on GitHub.
The 2.5.8.1 files are also mirrored on the XOOPS File Repository on SourceForge
Get XOOPS 2.5.7.3
Release files are available on the XOOPS File Repository on SourceForgePosted January 1, 2017 | 12:51 am
