The Kunena Team is excited to announce the release of Kunena 1.6, Release Candidate 2. This is the second 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 release candidate of Kunena 1.6, the Kunena team has been focused on fixing over 100 bugs and issues including CSS fixes, usability issues, IE7 compatibility issues, API issues, new modules and plug-ins 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 both Joomla 1.5 and 1.6. A long list of new features in addition to various optimizations and code restructuring have resulted in the most advanced version of Kunena to date.
We continue to put a big emphasis on usability and ease of installation. Therefore, the installer has been further enhanced to allow for multiple installation and upgrade options. It performs incremental steps to avoid timeouts on slower hosts. It automatically performs actions such as taking the forum offline during the installation or upgrade 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 soon. They can also 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 the underlying code, which allows for version-independent template development. Templates can embed various options that can be set via the included template manager (e.g. avatar position on left, right, top, or bottom in the new default template, Blue Eagle).
The Kunena Team is fully committed to Joomla 1.6 and beyond and a number of modules have been developed to lay the groundwork 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, new in RC2: Greek, Polish, Thai and Turkish (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:
- Allow forum members to set up and participate in polls
- Category specific: enabled in the 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 within the 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
- Ability to move or delete all posts of a particular user (supports better spam management)
- User profile access for moderators even if integrated with JomSocial, Community Builder, or others
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 them
- 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 limit)
- 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 posts
- New BBCode tags like [article], [attachment], [confidential], [map], [table] and others
- Enhanced BBCode [quote] with reference to user and post
- Selectable date/time format display options for all time displays and independent for tooltips (relative "ago" vs absolute)
Usability Improvements:
- Improved RSS features
- Color coded categories
- Color coded usernames
- 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 automated 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, ability to restore from backup or attempt 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.
