Developer News: Development Update: XOOPS 2.1.0 Closing In

Posted by: MithrandirOn 2005/4/30 17:26:15 10338 reads
*phew*

It was a hard struggle, but I have finally committed some more exciting code (well... I guess "exciting" is stretching it a bit )

In addition to the dynamic user profiles, which are implemented but not integrated sufficiently in the Profile module that is created to manage the fields as well as users, I have just committed something just as eagerly awaited

What is it? What IS it? You may ask, and I shall tell you:

Remember how often, you have been annoyed that you have to edit a module's xoops_version.php in order to add more blocks of the same type? Remember how happy you were that GIJOE made a blocks administration module with the ability to clone blocks?

Well, in XOOPS 2.1.0 you don't "clone" blocks, you instantiate them. Meaning that blocks are now saved as "types" in the database and when you want a new block, you make a new instance of the block, customise its settings, give it a title and set it to be visible where you want it (still only on a per-module basis, I'm afraid). If you want a block to be on the left side in the News module, but on the right side in the forums, you just make two instances, one visible in the News module and positioned to the left side and one visible in the forum module and positioned to the right side.

Simple? Perhaps, but it was a downright pain in the rectum to implement the upgrade.

Upgrade? Yes, you can upgrade from XOOPS 2.0.10 simply by overwriting all files (except mainfile.php) and going to admin.php (might be a good idea to log in and go to the administration area before overwriting the files - otherwise you will have to go manually to /user.php, log in and manually go to /admin.php) and update the System module through modules administration. Note that the Profile module is mandatory in this process as it will take over a large portion of the fields formerly in the core users table and I have not yet implemented code to check whether the module is available prior to installing it during the System Module update. Consider yourself warned.

As always - this is NOT for production sites. NO support will be given except that serious bugs will of course be attempted fixed.

If you want to check it out, you can either get it from SourceForge CVS (Xoops2_1_0-branch-new CVS branch) or wait until tomorrow and grab it from the CVS Nightly Build