RC3 RELEASE STATUS

RC3 will be released soon. please be patience we're still debugging the package, and adding little tweaks here and there. To make this process go smoother and quicker over the last couple of weeks, we have expanded the bug busting team, and they are doing a bang up job, catching bugs and fixing problems. If all goes well when we release RC3 it'll be one of the most "bug free" open source software packages that you've seen.

We're also hoping to release RC3 as a complete "package". Meaning, all the support sites have been busy translating the package, we invited a group of module developers to join the bug team, so we're hoping that when we release RC3 it'll be with all the language localizations, module documentation and as many module upgrades as possible.

This morning we upgraded the mainsite Xoops.org to test RC3 in a live environment for a minimum of one week before the package is finally released. Now that the main site is upgraded, you know the public release is close at hand. We understand your frustration with wondering whether to wait or do what you need to do now.

My advice is, just work with RC2.02 it's stable and there a ton of cool modules available for it. RC3 will have some nice enhancements to the forum system, but most of the changes are currently "under the hood" to help us speed towards Xoops Final 1.0. There aren't that many new "bells and whistles" in RC3. RC3 bells and whistles include

"Enhanced Forums w/Sticky Topic"
"New Polls Module"
"Mailing List Module"
?

RC3 will be released as one package and will contain an upgrade script.

CVS

We are looking into opening one up for the devs. And still discussing this internally.

DOCUMENTATION & RC@ & RC3 COMPATIBILITY

RC3, as many of you are aware will not work with RC2 modules, to port your mods to RC3, you can use the documentation provided on here https://xoops.org/mod.html The User Documentation is now available for download as well from http://www.eclipsemagazine.com/Documentation.doc . We're busy working on a FAQ now and will be releasing it with in the next two weeks. RC2 Themes will be compatible with RC3, so you all don't have to worry about that.

There will be no Theme or Module documentation released with RC3 as the team has been really busy on coding, so hopefully sometime after RC3 has been released, we'll be able to get to it. If some of you from the Xoops community would like to take a stab at creating something, we'll be more than happy to look it over.

XOOPS TEAM ORGANIZATION

We're now getting around to organizing the team, and will have an about us page up soon. We
created a ML for the Xoops Devs to better communicate with each other. Eric and myself will
be managing the Xoops.org site and handling the marketing and PR of Xoops (and most of the non-coding aspects of Xoops). The rest of the Devs will be handling the development of the core.

As I said earlier, we have expanded the beta team, and got all the support sites a copy of RC3 for them to start their language translations.

XOOPS MODULE AND THEMESITES

We have a new official Xoops Themesite, and that is themecentral.com . Everyone please welcome them to the Xoops fold, and you can get all your Xoops themes from them.

We're still looking for someone to develop a module repository for us. In order to qualify, you must meet a few simple criteria which are as follows:

1) The repository should obviously have as many modules as possible available for download.

2) People shouldn't have to register to download a module (but members of the Xoops community should be considerate and register on the site).

3) Forums for Module Developers to support their modules.

4) Testing and Demos, all available modules should be "live" for community members to test. Ideally, the admin areas for the modules would also be accessible as well.

If you build and manage the site, and it meets our requirements, then we would be more than happy to provide you with 500 mbs of space on our server to do what you will with (this includes the space for the module site). If we get a lot of response to this then we would encourage you all to work together, or maybe we'll have a contest and take the best two sites as judged by the community.

So that's all folks. Until next week.

Michelle