Post in GroupServer 1.0 Alpha

Jun 16 03:33 UTC

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/