Post in GroupServer 1.0 Alpha
Well. Finally we're announcing the GroupServer 1.0 alpha release: Cream Freeze at the Beach. If it seems like it's been a long time since the last release... it has. The previous release was April 10th 2006. To try it out right away, you can find the buildout here: http://www.groupserver.org/downloads/ I'll give a rundown on what's changed, but first I think a bit of background on why the release has taken us so long is in order. The previous release was pretty good, but it was quite difficult to test, and had dependencies on a lot of 'through-the-web' code and templates (code stored in an object database, for those not familiar with Zope). This made it tricky to provide an upgrade path, and customisation for our different clients wasn't the easiest thing either. So we held back the release till we could get to the stage where upgrading was possible (because it's in our best interest for people to be able to upgrade to the latest version as easily as possible), and the code base allowed us to easily integrate changes from contributors. Obviously in all this time we've made other changes to the system. The one word summary of what has changed could be "Everything". Here is a longer version, in no particular order: - Much of the system data (but not yet all) is now stored in a relational database. - Still using Zope 2, but with extensive work undertaken to shift towards Zope 3 using the Five bridge. - The XML/XSLT processing framework has been all but completely removed from GroupServer. This was an interesting idea that was, for the most part, somewhat premature. - Performance has improved at least an order of magnitude in every area, and in some cases several orders of magnitude. - Many, many bugfixes and refactorings have occurred -- over 2900 revisions since the last release, including crushing some particularly annoying unicode bugs. - Chat feature -- a simple, AJAX based web chat client. - Skinnable using Zope 3 style skins - Complete rebuild of the message rendering interface, using search, AJAX for progressive rendering. - A huge number of other interface refinements, and many more management screens - Replaced the underlying javascript library. Twice. (now using jQuery: http://www.jquery.com) - Site and user-configurable timezones with support for Daylight Saving Time - Total rewrite of the registration, email verification and user profiles - The beginnings of a content management framework -- more of this will land before the beta release (based on WYMEditor: http://www.wymeditor.org -- an awesome editor) - Refined bounce handler - More extensive logging of user actions - Group participation statistics - Rewritten file library, now using search and fully integrating files with messages - Completely new search framework - Keywording of emails to produce automatic email summaries - More atom feeds - New redirection framework to allow shorter links to several types of content - Buildout based environment, making it easier to get a consistent development (and production) environment You can find more information about the direction of GroupServer here: http://www.groupserver.org/groupserver/roadmap/ As always, we are open to bribery when it comes to our roadmap -- Beer, Vodka and Money all work particularly well. At this stage we want feedback, bugfixes, feedback, documentation and feedback. Feedback would also be good. If you'd like to participate in the development process (encouraged!) we have two groups: GroupServer Development (discussion about new features, improvements to existing features, general ideas): http://www.groupserver.org/groups/development GroupServer Team (invitation or by request only, for those with commit access): http://www.groupserver.org/groups/groupserver_team This release has primarily been supported by: Advanced Business Education Limited http://www.abel.ac.nz/about/abel E-Democracy.org Forums http://forums.e-democracy.org/ Onlinegroups.net http://www.onlinegroups.net An extra special plug for OnlineGroups.net, without whom releasing GroupServer would not be possible -- Start your free hosted GroupServer public site today at http://onlinegroups.net/sites/start_a_site/
This site is provided by OnlineGroups.Net, where you can start your own free online groups site, using the open source web-based mailing list manager GroupServer.