Right now mainly testing on PHP 7.4.4 up to PHP 8.5, to make sure that it is running correctly on all of them, and fixing any bugs.

Because of your experience with themes, testing and improving the "Modern" Admin theme would be definitely appreciated.

I'm sorry for the mistake in my wording, I ment to say that this release has been coming for quite a while

What needs to happen for XOOPS 2.5.12 before we can release it? Is there a list of issues and things that need to be tackled?

You could also help us with testing and improving the new "Modern" Admin theme, I just uploaded to GitHub.

The docs are here: https://github.com/XOOPS/XoopsCore25/tree/master/htdocs/modules/system/themes/modern/docs

Little video:

Hi Kevin,

1) XOOPS 2.5.12: we've been through 9 Betas already, so saying that it was in Alpha for years, is not fair! I'm finalizing now the RC-1, hopefully in next couple of weeks.

2) XOOPS 2.6.0: Geekwright has been working for it, but now that he's gone due to health issues, it had to be put on the back burner, as I'm focusing on the XOOPS 2.5.12. However, I'm looking for ways to "down-port" some of the cool ideas from there to 2.7.0 (I already ported the Debugbar and Monolog Logger)

3) XOOPS 2.7.0: the idea was to use it to clean-up any old code from XOOPS 2.5.12 and prepare it for PHP 8.2 or even PHP 8.4 as the minimum version. Nicolas, Alain, and Mage were going to work on it, but I didn't hear much lately, so I don't know the current status.

4) I also experiment with some DDD, but more details about it later this year

For right now the most help we would need is with XOOPS 2.5.12, so we can release it!

Hey all,

I have noticed that XOOPS.org has become extremely slow the last few times I have used it - I now that historically, the hosting of XOOPS has been done by a list of companies going back years and years ago with it being sponsored for a while even.
A lot of consolidation has happened in the webhosting market and the current host of xoops.org, Arvixe, has been acquired in a loop where a company gets acquired and the websites get moved to new hardware with very strict resource limitations set on it. That has led to the XOOPS.org website being extremely slow, while the costs for the hosting have probably increased a lot.
The same thing has happened with a lot of web hosters, all being acquired by Newfold Digital, Inc (who used to be known as Endurance Group). They're known for this kind of thing where they acquire good webhosts and then just drop all kinds of support/outsource it, performance gets really bad and prices go up.

I have been having real issues today where several pages just refuse to load or take VERY long to load and I suspect others are also having the same issues.
I also had issues where a password reset link didn't want to send (Failed to write message to sendmail (broken pipe).)

Instead of continuing to use Arvixe (of which the price and performance will only worsen), I would suggest we look into another hosting partner/provider that isn't a part of Newfold Digital, Inc and perhaps even go with a VPS at a provider like DigitalOcean, which will likely provide a MUCH better performance to price ratio.

Previously, I worked at the biggest webhost in my (European) country, so I do have a lot of experience with webhosting, tweaking things and managing a server. I am absolutely willing to offer support here to help manage a server or help improve the configuration/tweaking things. But right now, xoops.org has gotten so slow that something needs to happen.

An honest question here, but what is currently in active development? Please don't see this as an attack but I have been looking at some of the branches recently and it was difficult for me to figure out what and where the development was actually happening.

I saw the news post stating that work has started on 2.7, but there's barely any movement there. Then I saw this that there is no active development happening on 2.6. There's been a new version of XOOPS 2.5 that has been in development and in alpha for literally years and I tried to look at which point I could enter and help with some improvements, to brush up my PHP, but simply don't where I can help with the development and what still needs to happen before a new release can happen - what would the entrypoint be?

As the first benefit of upgrading XOOPS 2.6.0, I just ported Debugbar & Monolog Logger to XOOPS 2.5.12
  
Geekwright did really awesome job with implementing it in XOOPS 2.6.0, and I thought that it should be added to 2.5.12 too!
 
If you’re using Ray for debugging, the good news is that the Debugbar module also includes RayLogger that you can use for debugging Smarty templates.
 
 
The XOOPS DebugBar module provides two complementary debugging tools:
 
DebugBar (always available) -- an in-browser toolbar that shows queries, timers, blocks, Smarty variables, errors, and included files directly at the bottom of every page.
 
Ray (optional) -- sends the same debug data PLUS template-level debug info to the Ray desktop app, giving you a separate, searchable, color-coded debug window.

They work independently. You can use DebugBar without Ray. If Ray is installed, both run simultaneously -- DebugBar in the browser, Ray on your desktop. More info in https://github.com/XOOPS/XoopsCore25/blob/master/htdocs/modules/debugbar/docs/ray-integration.md
 
Definitely useful tools for debugging!

Real Estate & Rental module for XOOPS:

Demo: https://demo.xoops.org/modules/realestate/

Code: https://github.com/mambax7/realestate

Features
- Property Management - Full CRUD for apartments, houses, villas, offices, and land
- Image Gallery - Multiple images per property with thumbnails, drag-and-drop ordering
- Advanced Search - Full-text search with filters (type, status, price range, city, beds/baths)
- Interactive Maps - OpenStreetMap integration with coordinate picker in admin
- Contact System - Built-in messaging from visitors to property owners
- Favorites - Logged-in users can save favorite properties
- Blocks - Featured properties, latest listings, browse by city
- Responsive Design - Mobile-first CSS, modern card layout
- Admin Dashboard - Statistics, property management, message center
- Sample Data Seeder - 12 properties with placeholder images auto-installed

XOOPS Development Team has added a PhpUnit test suite to XOOPS 2.5.12 that hopefully will help us with some regression testing:

https://github.com/XOOPS/XoopsCore25/pull/1605

If you have time, check it out if you see something strange or weird

The XOOPS Development Team is pleased to announce the release of XOOPS 2.6.0-Alpha-1

XOOPS 2.6.0 is not actively developed at the moment, but in case somebody would like to put some effort into it, it has been updated to PHP 8.4 as the minimum PHP version.


Please help make XOOPS better by testing and reporting any issues