PostNuke

Version 5.0.1
12-Aug-2004

* Changed destructor mechanism so that destructors are called prior to request shutdown. (Marcus)
* Rewritten UNIX and Windows install help files. (Documentation Team)
* Updated several libraries bundled with the windows release which now includes libxml2-2.6.11, libxslt-1.1.7 and iconv-1.9.1. (Rob, Edin)
* Improved and moved ActiveScript SAPI to PECL. (Wez)
* Fixed unloading of dynamically loaded extensions. (Marcus, kameshj at fastmail dot fm)
* Fixed ReflectionClass::getMethod() and ReflectionClass::getProperty() to raise an ReflectionException instead of returning NULL on failure. (Sebastian)
* Fixed convert.* filters to consume remaining buckets_in on flush. (Sara)
* Fixed bug in mysqli->client_version. (Georg)
* Fixed bug #29606 (php_strip_whitespace() prints to stdout rather then returning the value). (Ilia)
* Fixed bug #29577 (MYSQLI_CLIENT_FOUND_ROWS undefined) (Georg)
* Fixed bug #29573 (Segmentation fault, when exception thrown within PHP function called from XSLT). (Christian)
* Fixed bug #29522 (accessing properties without connection) (Georg)
* Fixed bug #29505 (get_class_vars() severely broken when used with arrays). (Marcus)
* Fixed bug #29490 (.Net object instantiation failed). (Michael Sisolak).
* Fixed bug #29474 (win32: usleep() doesn't work). (Wez)
* Fixed bug #29449 (win32: feof() hangs on empty tcp stream). (Wez)
* Fixed bug #29437 (Possible crash inside array_walk_recursive()). (Ilia)
* Fixed bug #29431 (crash when parsing invalid address; invalid address returned by stream_socket_recvfrom(), stream_socket_getname()). (Wez)
* Fixed bug #29409 (Segfault in PHP functions called from XSLT). (Rob)
* Fixed bug #29395 (sqlite_escape_string() returns bogus data on empty strings). (Ilia, Tony)
* Fixed bug #29392 (com_dotnet crashes when echo'ing an object). (Wez)
* Fixed bug #29368 (The destructor is called when an exception is thrown from the constructor). (Marcus)
* Fixed bug #29354 (Exception constructor marked as both public and protected). (Marcus)
* Fixed bug #29342 (strtotime() does not handle empty date string properly). (Ilia)
* Fixed bug #29340 (win32 build produces invalid php_ifx.dll). (Edin)
* Fixed bug #29335 (fetch functions now use MYSQLI_BOTH as default) (Georg)
* Fixed bug #29291 (get_class_vars() return names with NULLs). (Marcus)
* Fixed bug #29264 (gettext extension not working). (Edin)
* Fixed bug #29258 (variant_date_from_timestamp() does not honour timezone). (Wez)
* Fixed bug #29256 (error when sending large packets on a socket). (Dmitry)
* Fixed bug #29236 (memory error when wsdl-cache is enabled). (Dmitry)
* Fixed bug #29147 (Compile Error in mnoGoSearch functions). (Sergey, Antony)
* Fixed bug #29132 ($_SERVER["PHP_AUTH_USER"] isn't defined). (Stefan)
* Fixed bug #29119 (html_entity_decode() misbehaves with UTF-8). (Moriyoshi)
* Fixed bug #29109 (SoapFault exception: [WSDL] Out of memory). (Dmitry)
* Fixed bug #29061 (soap extension segfaults). (Dmitry)
* Fixed bug #28985 (__getTypes() returning nothing on complex WSDL). (Dmitry)
* Fixed bug #28969 (Wrong data encoding of special characters). (Dmitry)
* Fixed bug #28895 (ReflectionClass::isAbstract always returns false). (Marcus)
* Fixed bug #28829 (Thread-unsafety in bcmath elementary values). (Sara)
* Fixed bug #28464 (catch() does not catch exceptions by interfaces). (Marcus)

Footnote: 1

1. Backup each file you edit before proceding. 2. In your multisite configuration, edit each pntables.php for each multisites under your parameters/sub.domain to share nuke_session_info, e.g.

$session_info = 'nuke_session_info';

2. Edit includes/pnSession.php and search for session.cookie_domain and you will find the line:

ini_set('session.cookie_domain', $domain);

which I changed to

ini_set('session.cookie_domain', 'postnuke.com');

3. Flush the nuke_session_info table in your database deleting all current session records. In the 0.8 series we will revisit the multisite system making the system easier to administer.

Good luck :)

Mark West (Great Britain) presented past, present and future of the Xanthia templating engine. Form it's roots in eNvolution development to the recent integration of Xanthia as a subclass of pnRender which reduce Xanthia's code by almost 50%. He emphasized the advantages of this real templating system of non-templating systems like the old theme enginge or Autotheme.

After some turkish fast food Larsneo (Germany) told about the advantages of accessibility within Postnuke core. All avertable barriers will be removed from the core. The rest will lie in the hands of the administrator. This will not only make Postnuke sites accessible for handicapped users but also better to evaluate for search engines.

His second topic was the dangers of cross site scripting and other security issues. He pointed out his latest advances in fighting these problems. In the following discussing the team came up with a number of ideas that might prevent some of the mistakes of the past.

The second Day

The second day was the day of the module developers and far too short. Jørn Lind-Nielsen (Denmark) introduced us to his latest coup: workflows in Pagesetter 5.0.0. The state-based system uses XML and php-plugins for the design of specific workflows. Everybody was really impressed by his advances.

A new quality of commercial module development was presented by Frank Schummertz (Germany): He and his collegues from pnCommerce are currently working on a complex confugurator module that enables their customer to offer a shopping system for air conditioning system. The user enters all the requirements he has and the module calculates a specific offer.

The Remains of the Day

All in all it was a very interesting weekend with a bunch of really nice people. I think by getting to know eachother personally the relations within the team improve and we established some quite important connections among the module developers. As far as I understood Jørn, he's going to cooperate with Xexpress' Brave Cobra (Belgium) who not only entertained us with the story of his journey that almost ended in Paris and not in Stuttgart, because he used the right highway in the wrong direction. He also turned out to be a skilled singer and guitarplayer as he played some songs in the Biergarten as the other relaxed from the day.

Not quite a Roadmap

One of the important results of the meeting was the evaluation of the state of the .8-development – what is done, what is missing and what needs to be done:

Postnuke .8 will not contain any more features that .7x in regard to kinky stuff like more colorful links or coffee machine drivers. It will be a total redesign of the Postnuke core that gets rid of all the legacy stuff from phpNuke and form Postnuke into a professional framework that offers Interfaces for module developers.

So the main features will be the abstraction of API, Permissions, ADODB aso from the modules. An admin will be able to install the pure core with e.g. Pagesetter only and it will work. This will be a slim, performative core and it is already pretty advanced. But it needs to be completed and properly tested.

The next step will be milestone releases for module developers to test their modules with the new core. These milestones will work and can be uses as example but there will be no upgrade mechanisms for existing sites and no garantee that it will be 100% compatible to the final release. As a result the milestones can't be used in live sites.

Another thing that needs to be done is a total rewrite of all the old modules. They need to be API compliant and templated. The estimated 6 month did not suffice as the work turned out to be more complicated than imagined.

The last problem to be solved is the upgrading process, as for example the data from the Weblinks module will have to be distributed to the new Weblinksmodule, the ratings hook and EZComments.

All this efford will make the system more secure, performative and flexible but it's still some road ahead.

BTW: We are already planning a second meeting next year near Hamburg.

If you want to attend this meeting, please write Genix an email at Genix@genix.dk with your name and adress.

Place:

Gate58 (internet café)
Vestergade 58
8000, Ã…rhus C
Denmark

Gate58 homepage

PostNuke Denmark


Price 65 Dkr - Including a Sandwich and snacks :)

If you need a place to crash, there will be room in my apartment.

We arranged the planned discussions in three categories:
- "technical" (Software Testing, Securiry, Xanthia)
- "strategical" (SEO, Accessibility, Comparison to other CMS)
- "Current status of other modules".

The meeting will take place at the dancing academy Harry Hagen Leonberg.

For accommodation, there is a special pricing at the Hotel Kirchner.

The fee is 20 EUR (excluding food, drinks, accommodation etc)

The complete program can be found here.

If you would like to attend, please contact us at pnMeeting@postnuke.com.

Select whichever package is most suitable for you. ...[...]..." read more on the new phpBB v 2.0.9 Release-article

Footnote: 1

Although the website is very new, quite slow, and still in need of more content, it shows a real potential in helping the teacher education community across Ethiopia to make the most of the Internet that has been recently connected to their institutions.

Recently, the Ethiopian magazine, ICT Focus, held the "Best Website Awards 2004" and granted ETEP a gold award for one of the best Ethiopian websites that is pursuing "best practices" in website design & Internet communications.

Why these numbers? Well since March 2002 we have had well over 1,000,000 page hits, we have 1,584 registered users and well over 12,000 submissions in our forums. This may not sound like much compared to other countries but considering the size of Denmark... it is.

We have some very competent supporters in our midst of which I will only mention a few (some may have heard about): Øivind Skau aka little (Norwegian Developer of PagEd, Nubel etc.), Franz Skaaning aka lexebus.net (Themes etc.), Jørn Lind (Developer of PhotoShare and PageSetter) and believe me there are a lot more just as competent... thanks to ALL of them and to all the members without whom we (the supporters) would die of boredom ;-)

Besides support in the forums we do a lot of translation and documentation to give newbies the best possible experience with PostNuke.

I can honestly say that I'm proud to take part in the "journey" and although our community may be small... we make a difference for thousands of users in Denmark.

Thanks to hazan for this great idea... this could very well turn out to be the "starter" for some greater things... better awareness of PostNuke's impact globaly... better communication between the various communities... etc. etc.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank all the developers out there, core as well as module and theme developers for their unremitting efforts to support and develop PostNuke and 3. party modules and themes.

Also many thanks to the admins, supporters and users of PostNuke.dk without whom these lines would never have been written!

Best Regards
Kim Enemark
Admin (PostNuke.dk)

CBF's extranet site has been under development for some months now. We were able to very easily modify the functionality of PN out of the box, in-house, to perfectly suit the needs of a corporate intranet/extranet environment and CBF finally went from a period of several weeks of "live preview" state to production today; we have received fantastic feedback thus far.

I have made some changes to various modules to accomodate sub-admins in a corporate intranet/extranet environment, some of which I've already released to the PN community, and the rest are on their way. Unfortunately, the CBF extranet site is not available to view, as it authenticates against CBF's internal network, but I do plan on replicating the site database to some other place on the internet sometime soon, and to also allow people to login and view the permissions schema and distribute the rest of the module changes that help to accomodate a corporate intranet/extranet environment with subadmins.

*****
About CBF:

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) is the largest conservation organization dedicated solely to saving the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Our motto, Save the Bay, defines the organization's mission and commitment to reducing pollution, improving fisheries, and protecting and restoring natural resources such as wetlands, forests, and underwater grasses. CBF headquarters is in Annapolis, MD, and has state offices in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., as well as smaller satellite office throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed. In addition, CBF also operates 15 environmental education centers throughout the watershed, as well as educational programs and trips conducted upon the waters of the Chesapeake.

CBF was founded in 1967 and is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. It is supported by more than 116,600 active members and has a staff of approximately 180 full-time employees. More than 90 percent of CBF's $19 million annual budget is privately raised.
*****

Thanks, pnDevs, pnCorps and pnCommunity... I thought you should all know that you're helping to "Save the Bay" by all your valuable contributions!

Next we have several members working exclusively in support - they help newbies with their problems in the forums and work on the German documentation for admins, developers and designers. To name only a few "hardcore supporters" there are Klaus Petzka (Petzi-Juist), Special Agent Immo Fietz (immof) and my humble self Steffen Voß (ArschMitOhren).

Since May 2002 our site has attracted more than 3,500 registered users, who produced close to 40,000 forum posts and more than 6,000,000 pageviews.

Last year we decided to found a membership corporation. That is done by now, but due to the distance between the various founders and the medium Iinternet, we haven't achieved the ability to actually take new members but that will be solved soon. (Prussian Bureaucracy) ;-)

Our latest event is the European pnMeeting in August. What was intended to be an informal barbeque with our Southern Germans Jörg, Andreas and Frank, evolved into an Iinternational developer meeting. Mark and Drak from Great Britain will also come along with Jörn from Denmark, Brave Cobra from Belgium. I think it's going to be nice and we will certainly present a couple of hundred photos afterwards. ;-)