Developer Blog
Revving up for Kunena 2.0
Monday, 16 April 2012 20:21
Kunena 2.0 is a project that has been over two years in the making. The design objectives for Kunena 2.0 are, primarily, to implement changes that "remove the last of the remaining Fireboard legacy". In the course of this project, a number of improvements were backported to K 1.5 resulting in the transitional software known as K 1.6 (now K 1.7). With the end of J! 1.5 in sight and with J! 2.5 growing in popularity, that transitional version is less likely to fulfil the demands of users around the world who want reliability and scalability to meet their growing needs.
There's nothing seriously wrong with K 1.7. K 1.7, like it's predecessors, was based on the legacy of Fireboard and, in that sense, it is limited in meeting the emerging and current web technology trends that we witness today — issues like CSS3, mobile web apps, among others. Further, the design of Kunena in the versions available up to K 1.7 is not optimised for large websites involving millions of messages or hundreds of thousands of users. Change is inevitable under these conditions in order to make Kunena the most reliable, scalable, durable and robust forum component for Joomla that we can make it and to give people the best solution to meeting their forum needs.
The main design objectives for Kunena 2.0 are, among others:
- Database schema optimisation for improved performance and scalability to large forums up to millions of posts.
- Creating a Kunena framework that can be easily used in other Joomla extensions.
- Joomla! MVC compliance, making it easy for designers to customise Kunena.
- Meeting the emerging and current web technology trends and giving users better experience.
As work continues to be done to develop a public release of Kunena 2.0, we will shortly be making visible changes to this website. The first of these changes will be to implement Kunena 2.0 here, at www.kunena.org, so that everyone will have the opportunity to trial the new software before a public beta release becomes available. This article describes some of those changes that people will see.
Kunena roadmap 2012
Tuesday, 31 January 2012 20:33
The following table oulines the roadmap for the Kunena project for 2012.
The timings given in the following table are appoximate and subject to change depending on availability of people who have given their time voluntarily to make Kunena the best web forum component for Joomla.
| JOOMLA | KUNENA | |
|---|---|---|
| March 2012 | K 2.0 beta public release | |
| April 2012 | Joomla 1.5 reaches end-of-life | |
| May 2012 | K 2.0 public stable release. This will also be the last version that offers compatibility with J! 1.5 and J! 2.5 | |
| July 2012 | K 1.7 reaches end-of-life and support will cease for that series | |
| September 2012 | Joomla 3.0 released | K 3.0 beta public releas |
| November 2012 | K 3.0 public stable release. It is likely that K 2.0 will not work with J! 3.0 | |
| January 2013 | K 2.0 reaches end-of-life and support will cease for that series. |
Importantly, following the release of K 1.7.0 last year, no support will be offered for installations running K 1.6.x or any add-ons (including third-party templates) written for K 1.6. Over the coming months, topics that discussed these older, outdated versions will be systematically archived from the forum and locked. We understand that, for some people, the task of upgrading software will be difficult but these decisions have been taken in the interests of the vast majority of users who want to move forward and keep up-to-date as Kunena moves forward in line with ongoing activities occurring within the Joomla community as a whole.
Equally importantly, people are encouraged to read the technical requirements article in the Wiki and to begin the process now of upgrading to J! 1.5.25 (including the removal of any J! 1.0 extensions that require the use of "legacy mode") or to migrate to J! 2.5 before support for older versions of Joomla disappears.
Kunena 1.7.2 released
Thursday, 26 January 2012 21:23
Introduction
The Kunena team has now released Kunena 1.7.2 as a native Joomla extension for J! 1.5, J! 1.7 and J! 2.5. This is an important maintenance release and replacement for all previous versions of Kunena and it is recommended that all users upgrade to Kunena 1.7.2 at the earliest opportunity.
In order to achieve interoperability with all of J! 1.5, J! 1.7 and J! 2.5, several important matters in Kunena have been attended to before the next major release of Kunena 2.0 later this year. Some users of third-party templates written for older versions of Kunena will find that their templates may not work with this latest release because changes were necessary in order to fit with the new J! 2.5 CMS. In particular, most of the third-party templates written for K 1.6 in its early stages will cause problems. If in doubt, please contact the authors(s) responsible for those things to find out if updates are available. Priority support is given to issues affecting Kunena installations suing the Blue Eagle template. Other templates may cause problems; if in doubt, please contact the author of the template you are using for their support.
Note: Joomla 1.6 is not supported; J! 1.7 will not be supported after 24 February 2012.
Add-ons written for Kunena need to be separately installed. At this time previously-released add-on extensions for Kunena have not been updated. Until otherwise advised, users should use Kunena add-ons for K 1.7.2 with the version number 1.7.1. As with all other releases, K 1.7.2 is available for download on the download page.
Kunena 2.0 "show and tell"
Monday, 12 December 2011 01:27
Kunena 2.0 has been under construction for a long time - over 2 years, actually - and very soon the first test release will be made available to the public. This article is intended to generate interest in what Kunena 2.0 (we call it K 2.0) is about, why it was designed and why we think it will revolutionise the way that people think about Kunena.
Earlier this year I wrote an article called Kunena 2.0 a new communications platform for Joomla in which I attempted to provide some background information about the future of Kunena. As many of you will know, K 2.0 is already being used in a number of websites. Very soon we hope to use K 2.0 to run the forum here at www.kunena.org. This is for two reasons: firstly, because K 2.0 is actually better and easier for us to use and (b) as a way of finding out if there are defects that need to be fixed before we move to the later stage of releasing K 2.0 as a stable version. We're still a little way from that stage.
3 years of Kunena
Friday, 09 December 2011 14:50
The Kunena community and Kunena project team may be interested in an analysis of the download activity from the project's inception to the present time.
Version by version, the number of downloads for each major release of Kunena is shown in the four charts below and summarised in the table at the end of this article.
Kunena 1.7.1 released!
Wednesday, 16 November 2011 22:41
Introduction
The Kunena team has now released Kunena 1.7.1 as a native Joomla extension for J! 1.5 and J! 1.7. This is a security release and replacement for all previous versions of Kunena and it is recommended that all users upgrade to Kunena 1.7.1 at the earliest opportunity.
In order to achieve interoperability with both of J! 1.5 and J! 1.7, several important matters in Kunena have been attended to before the next major release of Kunena 2.0 later this year. Some users of third-party templates written for older versions of Kunena will find that their templates may not work with this latest release because changes were necessary in order to fit with the new J! 1.7 CMS. In particular, many of the third-party templates written for K 1.6 in its early stages will cause problems. If in doubt, please contact the authors(s) responsible for those things.
Note: Joomla 1.6 is no longer officially supported.
At this time all previously-released add-on extensions for Kunena have been updated and will need to be separately installed. As with all other releases, K 1.7.1 is available for download on the download page.
Kunena 1.7.0 released!
Monday, 29 August 2011 00:00
Introduction
The Kunena team has now released Kunena 1.7.0 as a native Joomla extension for J! 1.5.23, J! 1.6.6 and J! 1.7.0. This is a security release and replacement† for Kunena 1.5 and 1.6 and all users are recommended to upgrade to Kunena 1.7.0. Backup and testing are strongly recommended! K 1.7.0 makes all previous releases of Kunena obsolete and all users of prior Kunena releases are urged to upgrade as soon as possible.
 |
Kunena 1.7.0 announces the end of support for Kunena 1.5. |
Support for K 1.5 will cease one month after the release of K 1.7.
In order to achieve interoperability with all of J! 1.5, J! 1.6 and J! 1.7, several important matters in Kunena have been attended to before the next major release of Kunena 2.0 later this year. Some users of third-party templates written for older versions of Kunena will find that their templates may not work with this latest release because changes were necessary in order to fit with the new J! 1.6/1.7 CMS. In particular, many of the third-party templates written for K 1.6 in its early stages will cause problems. If in doubt, please contact the authors(s) responsible for those things.
At this time all previously-released add-on extensions for Kunena have been updated and will need to be separately installed. As with all other releases, K 1.7.0 is available for download on the download page.
Plans for Kunena 1.7
Written by sozzled Wednesday, 17 August 2011 15:29
Summary
It has been decided to release a new minor version to be known as Kunena 1.7. The purpose of this article is to inform all members of the community of this decision. This article discusses why a new minor version release is considered the most appropriate way to introduce these changes at this time and what this means for the Kunena project roadmap.
K 1.7 does not mean that you need to have J! 1.7 installed in order to run it. It is important to understand that K 1.7 will operate on all supported versions of Joomla, namely, J! 1.5.23, J! 1.6.6 and J! 1.7.0 and beyond (but not beyond J! 2.5). K 1.7 will make obsolete all previous versions of Kunena. Support for K 1.5 and K 1.6 will cease one month after the release of this new version. It is planned to introduce K 1.7 soon (towards the end of August 2011).
K 1.7 will implement four new features and a number of fixes for K 1.6.5.
For all intents and purposes, K 1.7 will not be significantly different to K 1.6 in terms of how it's installed or how it functions. For the most part, K 1.7 will be backward compatible with K 1.6 but not in all respects. The differences between K 1.7 and K 1.6 are summarised in a table at the end of this article.
2½ years of Kunena
Written by sozzled Saturday, 30 July 2011 18:30
The Kunena community and Kunena project team may be interested in an analysis of the download activity from the project's inception to the present time.
Version by version, the number of downloads for each major release of Kunena is shown in the three charts below and summarised in the table at the end of this article.
I want to migrate my forum to Kunena ...
Written by sozzled Sunday, 03 July 2011 15:39
"I want to migrate my forum to Kunena because Kunena has a future and, for me, it's the way to go." Whether we're discussing Kunena or any other web-based forum application, this is probably a question that every website owner has encountered and wants to know the answer to. It's not simply a case of how to convert from "brand-X" forum - and you can substitute anything for "brand-X" - to Kunena but it's also a matter of how do you preserve the cultural history of you web community, something that you and your users have invested their heart, their time (and possibly their money) into as well. How do you capture and preserve the essence of the community to keep it alive and to prosper and thrive with the reassurance that Kunena is a product with a future and that it will also support your community as it continues to grow?
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