Topic: PunBB 1.2
I am very happy and proud to announce the release of PunBB 1.2. It's been a long time coming, but I think it has been worth the wait. PunBB 1.2 introduces a number of new features while staying true to the PunBB philosophy of keeping things nice and neat. In addition to the new features, PunBB has undergone a performance and security overhaul and is now faster and more secure than ever. However, the biggest change since 1.1 is the new markup. Thanks to the work of Paul Sullivan, PunBB 1.2 outputs semantically correct XHTML 1.0 strict and uses CSS to a much greater degree than before. I'm looking forward to seeing what some of the style authors out there will be able to do with the new style sheets. Here's a breakdown of some of the most important changes in PunBB 1.2:
- Completely new markup and CSS by Paul Sullivan.
- Improved documentation by Bert Garcia.
- A proper user group system with global and forum specific permission settings.
- Administration interface plugins. For example, this post is turned into a news post on punbb.org with the help of such a plugin.
- SQLite support. PunBB now support MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite.
- MySQL 4.1+ support via PHP's mysqli extension.
- Simple file-based caching of static data to improve performance.
- Post preview.
- User-based language selection.
- Redesigned profile.
- Ability to search for users based on username in user list.
- E_ALL compatible.
- More advanced BBCode pre-parsing.
- Redirect forums.
- Ability to delete all of a specific users posts.
For a full rundown on what has changed since PunBB 1.1.5, take a peek at the changelog. All 24343 bytes of it!
The 1.1 to 1.2 upgrade procedure is detailed in docs/install.html which is included in the download archive. The procedure has changed somewhat from previous versions, so it is considered required reading even for PunBB veterans. As always, PunBB is released without any warranties, so don't forget to make backups. Also, don't forget that language packs for PunBB 1.1 are incompatible with 1.2. The default language is English and any 1.2 install or upgrade will use it accordingly. As new language packs are released, they will be available for download here on punbb.org. Already, language packs for Catalan, French and Swedish are available and Dutch, German and Hebrew are in the works.
PunBB 1.2 is a major upgrade from 1.1 and I do expect bugs to surface over the next few days. This release is considered stable, but if you are hesitant or if you run a high traffic site, wait a few days until the dust has settled. PunBB is slowly but surely approaching a state where it works pretty much the way I want it to. There are still things I want to add and/or change (i.e. there will be a 1.3), but the list is getting shorter and shorter. Feel free to request new features or suggest changes, but please bear in mind what PunBB is and what is strives to be. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read the about page.
Cheers!
2005-01-09: You can strike German off the list as well. It's now available via the downloads page.
