Over a year and a half has passed since work began on a brand new web software platform and a first class forum application built with it. Countless hours of work and extreme dedication to the task, together with extremely valuable input and feedback from a receptive and constructive community have resulted in a product of which we are extremely proud.
Today, twenty months after we began, we are ready to declare XenForo 1.0.0 stable and ready for deployment to production websites.
This stable release is accompanied by our new end-user documentation, bulk discount scheme and a special offer to thank those who have supported us over the past few months.
Since we released our first beta version to the public in October 2010 the community has been extremely busy. A brief inspection of the forums here reveals:
Over 150 add-ons:
Released add-ons include a portal, a custom BB code manager, iPhone and Android applications, bridges to other software, advertising management systems and all manner of administrative tools and helpers.
The speed at which add-ons are being produced for XenForo, and the quality of the code driving them is nothing short of staggering.
Nearly 80 styles:
All tastes are accounted for, with heavy industrial styles, light and airy styles, graphics-intensive styles and technical styles making innovative use of the style properties system.
These styles have been maintained throughout the pre-release phase of XenForo by a wide variety of stylers, and we anticipate seeing even greater achievements now that the software is declared stable.
Dozens and dozens of graphic elements:
The graphically talented have been hard at work producing ancillary, additional and replacement graphics for XenForo, and some of their creations are truly inspired.
Considering that these figures have been reached before the software has even been declared stable, we consider this an astonishing feat.
We extend our greatest thanks to all those who have dedicated their time, effort and money to helping XenForo reach this day. That means all those who have purchased licenses, answered questions on the forums, written add-ons, designed styles, painted graphics, modified templates or written tutorials and guides. Thank you all.
A special thanks must go to our moderators, who have worked tirelessly to give us developers as much development time as possible while maintaining order and civility on the forums.
We have so much more we still want to do, and our development plans are daunting in their scale and breadth, but code for XenForo 1.1.0 has already been written and we are bursting to write more. This is an exciting time for forum software, and we are glad to have you with us.
Installation and Upgrade Instructions
Full details for how to install and upgrade XenForo can now be found in the XenForo Manual.
Notable Changes
The development priority at this time is preparing XenForo 1.0.0 for stable release, but in the process of fixing bugs and polishing features, there have been some notable changes that may be of interest to you. Here are a few of them:
New Smilies
We have replaced the default set of smilies in this release with a new set, created by Shelley. This set includes smilies that are not enabled by default, but you may enable them via the smilie manager in your admin control panel.
The old 'doodled' smilies have been moved to the styles/default/xenforo/smilies.doodle/ directory. If you wish to continue using those smilies, you may update the paths in the smilie manager in the admin control panel.
Ad Location Templates
A number of ad_* templates have been added that allow you to place ads into strategic positions. The positions include above the content (below the top breadcrumb), within a message, below a message, within the sidebar, and more. Combined with conditions to limit their display, this is a very powerful way to add advertising to your forum.
The contents of the ad_* templates will not be changed by the XenForo developers until the time comes to deprecate them for a better system, so you can customize them in any way you see fit and never have to worry about needing to revert them.
Speed Improvements for Touch Browsers
Significant improvements have been made to XenForo's responsiveness in touch/mobile browsers, such as the iPhone.
This change has also allowed the Lightbox to be restored to touch browsers. (y)
Backward Compatability Breaks Since 1.0.0 RC3
Two changes have been made since 1.0.0 RC3 that may break backwards compatability with existing styles and add-ons that make use of the search system.
The stable API of XenForo allows us to alert developers to changes that may affect them, to avoid unpleasant surprises. Add-on developers and style designers should pay attention to these changes to ensure that their products are compatible with XenForo 1.0.0:
(PHP / MySQL) Search Results
Search results used to be stored in the xf_search.search_results table as a serialized array of the following structure:
This approach has been deprecated in favor of a JSON-encoded array of the following form:
The fields xf_search.search_constraints and xf_search.warnings have both been changed from storing serialized data to JSON-encoded data.
(HTML / JavaScript) QuickSearch Form
The QuickSearch form used to rely upon the primary <input type="search" /> field having name="keywords". This has now been changed, and it is now required that the primary <input type="search" /> field has id="QuickSearchQuery".
This thread seems to have taken on the mantle of being the official 1.0.0 discussion thread:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/march-8th-2011.13286/
Today, twenty months after we began, we are ready to declare XenForo 1.0.0 stable and ready for deployment to production websites.
This stable release is accompanied by our new end-user documentation, bulk discount scheme and a special offer to thank those who have supported us over the past few months.
Since we released our first beta version to the public in October 2010 the community has been extremely busy. A brief inspection of the forums here reveals:
Over 150 add-ons:
Released add-ons include a portal, a custom BB code manager, iPhone and Android applications, bridges to other software, advertising management systems and all manner of administrative tools and helpers.
The speed at which add-ons are being produced for XenForo, and the quality of the code driving them is nothing short of staggering.
Nearly 80 styles:
All tastes are accounted for, with heavy industrial styles, light and airy styles, graphics-intensive styles and technical styles making innovative use of the style properties system.
These styles have been maintained throughout the pre-release phase of XenForo by a wide variety of stylers, and we anticipate seeing even greater achievements now that the software is declared stable.
Dozens and dozens of graphic elements:
The graphically talented have been hard at work producing ancillary, additional and replacement graphics for XenForo, and some of their creations are truly inspired.
Considering that these figures have been reached before the software has even been declared stable, we consider this an astonishing feat.
We extend our greatest thanks to all those who have dedicated their time, effort and money to helping XenForo reach this day. That means all those who have purchased licenses, answered questions on the forums, written add-ons, designed styles, painted graphics, modified templates or written tutorials and guides. Thank you all.
A special thanks must go to our moderators, who have worked tirelessly to give us developers as much development time as possible while maintaining order and civility on the forums.
We have so much more we still want to do, and our development plans are daunting in their scale and breadth, but code for XenForo 1.1.0 has already been written and we are bursting to write more. This is an exciting time for forum software, and we are glad to have you with us.
Installation and Upgrade Instructions
Full details for how to install and upgrade XenForo can now be found in the XenForo Manual.
Notable Changes
The development priority at this time is preparing XenForo 1.0.0 for stable release, but in the process of fixing bugs and polishing features, there have been some notable changes that may be of interest to you. Here are a few of them:
New Smilies
We have replaced the default set of smilies in this release with a new set, created by Shelley. This set includes smilies that are not enabled by default, but you may enable them via the smilie manager in your admin control panel.
The old 'doodled' smilies have been moved to the styles/default/xenforo/smilies.doodle/ directory. If you wish to continue using those smilies, you may update the paths in the smilie manager in the admin control panel.
Ad Location Templates
A number of ad_* templates have been added that allow you to place ads into strategic positions. The positions include above the content (below the top breadcrumb), within a message, below a message, within the sidebar, and more. Combined with conditions to limit their display, this is a very powerful way to add advertising to your forum.
The contents of the ad_* templates will not be changed by the XenForo developers until the time comes to deprecate them for a better system, so you can customize them in any way you see fit and never have to worry about needing to revert them.
Speed Improvements for Touch Browsers
Significant improvements have been made to XenForo's responsiveness in touch/mobile browsers, such as the iPhone.
This change has also allowed the Lightbox to be restored to touch browsers. (y)
Backward Compatability Breaks Since 1.0.0 RC3
Two changes have been made since 1.0.0 RC3 that may break backwards compatability with existing styles and add-ons that make use of the search system.
The stable API of XenForo allows us to alert developers to changes that may affect them, to avoid unpleasant surprises. Add-on developers and style designers should pay attention to these changes to ensure that their products are compatible with XenForo 1.0.0:
(PHP / MySQL) Search Results
Search results used to be stored in the xf_search.search_results table as a serialized array of the following structure:
PHP:
serialize(array(
0 => array('content_type' => 'post', 'content_id' => 234),
1 => array('content_type' => 'thread', 'content_id' => 345),
...
));
PHP:
json_encode(array(
0 => array('post', 234),
1 => array('thread', 345),
...
));(HTML / JavaScript) QuickSearch Form
The QuickSearch form used to rely upon the primary <input type="search" /> field having name="keywords". This has now been changed, and it is now required that the primary <input type="search" /> field has id="QuickSearchQuery".
This thread seems to have taken on the mantle of being the official 1.0.0 discussion thread:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/march-8th-2011.13286/
