Introduction
The Kunena Team is excited to announce the release of Kunena 1.6, Release Candidate 1. This is the first RC release and is stable enough to be used on live production websites in limited usage (primarily for testing) as long as minor issues are tolerated during the time before it becomes a final release.
Since the first beta release of Kunena 1.6, the Kunena team has been focused on fixing a great number of bugs, CSS fixes, IE7 compatibility issues and adding translations for more languages.
Kunena 1.6 marks a major milestone for the Kunena project. A long list of open source contributors have committed over 2000 changes and have helped make Kunena the leading forum solution for Joomla 1.5 & 1.6. A long list of new features in addition with various optimizations and code restructuring have resulted in the most advanced Kunena version to date.
We continue to put a big emphasis on usability and easy of installation. As such the installer has been further enhanced to allow for multiple install and upgrade options. It performs its steps incrementally to avoid timeouts on slower hosts. It automatically performs actions as e.g. taking the forum offline during the install and re-enables it after completing the install.
Kunena now supports Joomla 1.6 style languages files that are backward compatible with Joomla 1.5. Multiple languages are included in the base install packages and more will be available and can be installed separately. Kunena 1.6 also support multiple languages to be installed on a single system and together with Joomla allows users to select their preferred language.
Templates have now been separated from underlying code and allow for version independent template development. Templates can embed various options that can be set via the included template manager (e.g. Avatar position left-right-top-bottom in the new default template - Blue Eagle).
The Kunena Team is fully committed to Joomla 1.6 and beyond and various modules have been developed to lay the ground work for future releases of Joomla.
What is New?
The new features in Kunena 1.6 include:
Improved Language Support:
- Included languages: Catalan, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Yugoslavian (more to come)
- Uses standard Joomla 1.6 language files (backwards compatible with Joomla 1.5.x)
- Added support for installable language packs (using the Joomla Installer)
New Kunena Template Manager:
- Centralized template system with installable templates
- New default template Blue Eagle
- Example template included for use as a base when creating new templates
- Template parameters that allow more freedom for template designers and site administrators
- Added support for icon sets allows different button and icon variations
New Integrated Polls Feature:
- Category specific: enable the feature from Category Manager
- Global settings to modify the poll behavior
- Migrate data from the Kunena 1.5 poll hack
Improved Topic and Post Moderation:
- Ability to restore and purge deleted posts with Trash Manager (backend)
- Unapproved or deleted topics and posts can be seen in many views
- Delete, restore and approve posts while reading topic
- Simplified move, merge and split
- Move current or newer posts into another category or (new) topic
New User Moderation Features:
- Users can be banned directly from their profile
- Ban only from the forum (= read only access) or from the entire website
- Ban user for a limited time (ban from the forum only)
- Allow moderators to share ban reasons and to write comments on it
- Ban history and show all previous bans on the user's profile
- List banned users in the Ban Manager on the moderator's profile page
New Posting and End User Features:
- Multiple attachments support (AJAX-based)
- Category subscriptions
- New 'Thank you' system for thanking the poster for their message
- Users can delete their own messages (configurable by time)
- Anonymous Tipping: allow users to post topics in a defined category completely anonymously (no IP, no tracking, totally anonymous)
- Google Maps integration - display basic maps inside of posts
- New BBCode tags like [article], [attachment], [confidential], [map], [table] and others
- Enhanced BBCode [quote] with reference to user and post
Usability Improvements:
- Improved RSS features
- Color coded categories
- Code highlighting with Geshi
- Many improvements in administrator backend interface
Integration with Other Components:
- New integration system that allows easy integration of avatars, profiles and user lists. login and registration, private messaging, activity notifications and basic access control
- Integrations included: AlphaUserPoints, Community Builder, JomSocial and UddeIM
New Router and Menu System
- Uses Joomla menus to navigate the Kunena component
- Easy to build your own custom Kunena menus with Joomla's Menu Item Manager
- Option to have categories located outside main forum
- Automatic super-routing uses best matching menu item for each page
New Installer:
- Step-by-step details of the installation process
- Fully automatic migration from Kunena 1.0.x and 1.5.x
- Migrate from FireBoard 1.0.0 - 1.0.5 without using external tools
- If migration fails, restore from backup or try again
- Option to cleanly uninstall Kunena 1.6 completely from your site
Other Changes:
- Converted from jQuery to MooTools 1.2 for better compatibility
- CSS and JavaScript minification using the YUI compressor for faster loading (disabled when debug is turned on)
- Uses CSS sprites for faster loading and fewer server hits
- Almost all code moved out of templates
- Basic API for Joomla modules and plug-ins
- Now uses #__kunena prefixed tables instead of #__fb
- Use /media/kunena instead of /images/fbfiles for avatars and new attachments
- Latest version checking
- Basic Joomla 1.6 support
Remember that you can test Kunena 1.6 with Joomla 1.6, but the support is not yet complete. For example, the Kunena menu will not be generated and there are some features, that do not work yet in Joomla 1.6. Kunena 1.6 will be ready for Joomla 1.6 once a final version is released.
