Xoops Engine, the next generation of XOOPS system, is redesigned with brand-new architecture and development standards by adopting cutting-edge libraries like Zend Framework 2 and Smarty 3.

Following the first public press in Nov 2010 in Beijing and Alpha 1 release on January 27th, the Xoops Engine Alpha 2 is coming to us. We are very happy to see more and more contributors joining us. Some of the names might be known or not known to you: designers like insraq and voltan have made new themes for Xoops Engine, Dong Lijun leads a dev team with ezsky on kernel test and app development as well as tech docs, kilica starts working on Xoops Engine and will provide us a most-wanted app, Marcus starts on kernel review and relevant docs ... The list is too long to mention here, you will see them very soon. There are some very talented developers from other well-known open source projects starting to work on Xoops Engine kernel and apps, they desire to not disclose their names at this moment but time won't be long before they introduce themselves with their exciting apps.

The XOOPS 2.* series is being improved continuously. On April 8th 2011, XOOPS 2.5.1 Final was released following its RC on March 17. The 2.5 series has been an community based improvement over 2.3/2.4, some proof-of-concept features are also introduced for a smoothy migration to Xoops Engine.

In the coming months, we will continue the exciting activities to get Xoops Engine ready as early as possible. Meanwhile XOOPS 2.5* series is maintained for bugfixes and security improvements.

More details will be updated more casually by frequently at Xoops Engine Dev Blog at http://dev.xoopsengine.org