PostNuke

First, the Xanthia Templating Environment. This will be a part of the .750 package, providing the superior templating and display features currently available with XTE as core. This ensures that you will not need to install XTE to take advantage of the increasing number of modules that use the templating environment, and that the caching and other features with XTE now come as standard.

Second, the Visual Editor will be modularised and updated to Typetool version 8.0. Although released previously as a separate module, the Typetool required the replacement of core files. Now, the new Visual Editor (which is cross-browser compatible) comes as a core module.

Next, core enhancements made to the PostNuke .8 series CVS have been backported to the .750 release. These changes greatly improve performance, especially on high traffic websites, and users of PostNuke in such environments should notice a marked increase in performance.

ADODB, has been updated to the recent latest release (4.21) to allow for upcoming PHP5 compatibility. Full details of improvements can be found at ADODB’s homepage - http://php.weblogs.com/ADODB.

Strict HTML compliance and XHTML compatibility has been achieved in the .750 code base. Building on work made on the .726 release, strict HTML compliance and XHTML compatibility has been achieved. This is of course theme and module dependant, however all core modules now render compliant to HTML and XHTML guidelines.

This compliancy fix has some side effects. To achieve this level of compliance and compatibility all instances of the image tags border=”0” attribute have been removed. This means that images may now display with a border, which on some sites may be undesirable. To prevent this problem occurring, a simple fix to the style sheets in the theme used can be applied. The fix is as follows:

IMG {
border : 0px;
}

This simple change should make certain that unwanted borders on images do not appear.

The Mailer module, which is currently in .8 CVS will be available as part of the .750 release. A problem sending e-mails using the existing .7x releases has been present for a small number of users, since the mailing feature in PostNuke is not customizable. The addition of the Mailer module makes it possible to change mail settings, and specify an alternate mail server, if required.

The template module has now been replaced with the example module. This change has been made to avoid confusion with the Xanthia Templating Environment, as the module can be used as a ‘template’ to build existing modules from.

In a separate improvement, the example module now uses pnRender (part of the XTE package) to display all module output.

The addition of XTE and the backporting of PostNuke .8 core enhancements will see a change in the minimum requirements for PN. PN .750 will have a minimum PHP requirement of a 4.1x build or above. This is due to the use of PHP 'superglobals' throughout the code.

Finally, many bug fixes have been applied to the .7x code as they have appeared. This should make the .750 Gold Release well worth upgrading to, as the number of enhancements and improvements is very high.

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They are forcing the basepath which is a global in that module.

[exact process edited]

Here's the report and link to the fix http://www.securiteam.com/unixfocus/6Y00M208UK.html

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Support for the Module is also given... look at the Forum...

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Xanthia Templating Environment

The Xanthia Templating Environment for PostNuke .726 is nearing an RC3 release. Since RC2 a number of enhancements and changes have been made, including some large performance gains. This has been achieved through reducing the number of SQL queries used to generate themes and, recently, the caching of palettes, zone and theme settings in a new pnTemp/Xanthia_Config directory. In addition, the Short URLs output filter now only operates on the master, not the sub-templates.

Theme designs should now form a full page (minus module and block zones). The header and footer areas are all contained within the themes, so as a user you can change header settings simply by modifying the theme.

Full page caching means that pages can be served without the need to execute module code. This feature, although of less use in heavily dynamic sites, those that have large amounts of static content can make use of this.

Support for module specific style sheets is also included in Xanthia RC3 – in <modname>/pnstyle/style.css.

The pnRender module has itself undergone changes. Additional template paths are available, allowing hooks functions and blocks to have different templates per to level module (pnModGetName()). A separate improvement, plugin results can now be assigned to a template variable.


.8 Development Progress

As development of .8 continues, more progress towards a Milestone release is being made. This release will primarily be aimed at 3rd Party Developers to allow them to test their modules with the new Core. Due to the substantial amount of change in the core, it is anticipated that module may need to make some minor changes – the milestone release should allow this to happen. As an initial target, 6-8 weeks has been estimated. This does however represent a substantial step towards Release Candidates and the future full release. The recent .8 developments are listed below:

New installer – The new installer is completed (exempting graphics work). The module is now based on the module’s separate initialization script, and links through each <modname>/pninit.php script to complete the install. This simplifies the installer, and ensures that it remains current through module changes.

Core pnHTML usage – The PostNuke_Core (system) tree is now free of pnHTML. Although PostNuke will continue to support pnHTML based modules until 1.0, all .8 core modules use pnRender.

Core optimization – Changes have been made throughout the core (/includes) to reduce the number of queries made during a page load by creating in memory caches of common data.

New database connection – This reduces memory overhead and global database connection. Credits for this enhancement go to Eric Barr from Envolution. This new method is backwards compatible to existing modules.


.7x Gold Release

It is planned to release a .7x Gold Release which will include the back ported enhancements that have been made to the .8 core, the removal of font tags, allowing for more control using CSS. The new database connection method is back ported, XTE will be included, and, although yet to be confirmed the Mailer module from .8 allowing configuration of mail settings, such as external SMTP servers.

Documentation Website

For a while now, the documentation site has been online, at http://docs.postnuke.com. The first project of the pnCorps at this website has been to improve and expand the FAQ. It now contains an increased amount of useful information and answers to common questions.

As the documentation site expands, the pnCorps would like contributions and suggestions for new documentation, As well as assistance maintaining and writing requested documentation. If you are interested in helping, submitting, or writing documentation, please see the pnCorps site at http://www.pncorps.net or contact myself; hammerhead AT postnuke DOT com

4. Code Optimization - In order to improve Postnuke's performance the code was optimized. Additionally Smarty's (Xanthia) and ADODB'd caching can be used.

5. Advanced User Module - All features of Chestnuts pncUserHack will be included in the new user module. Dynamic user date will be kept in an extra module.

6. Mailer Module - Basing upon phpMailer (PHP Libary) external SMTP-/Mailservers, HTML-mails and attachements can be used.

7. Further Database Abstraction - ADODB data dictionary Tools will support installation with various database management systems other than mysql.

8. Advanced Authentication - Additional to Postnuke's user database authentication with other system can be realized. LDAP will be supported and other systems can be added via plugins.

9. Additional Hook Modules - Jörg Napp's EZComments replaces the hitherto NS-Comment modules. Other hooks will be bbcode, bbclick, bbsmile and hitcount.

10. Advanced Statistics - Craig Saunder's AdvStats Module will replace the HTTP-referer and the statistics module.

11. Syndication Feeds (RSS / Atom) - Feeds can be generated from all modules using templates.

12. extended RSS Support - Future RSS support will be using external RSS parser Onyx RSS

13. Global Categories - The new categories module provides cateories in all compatible modules like FAQ, News, WebLinks aso.

14. Collected Pending Content - Basing upon the SnakePending module all pending content will be collected and displayed in a to-do overview.

15. Printing - Printing view supported via special printing template

16. Better Support of current Standarts - All output will be valid HTML strict (hitherto: transitional) and XHTML. This also applies for the the feeds.

17. Support of 3rd Party Developements - Postnuke will in future include 3rd party open source developements. Since the .7 series only featured ADODB as an example, .8 will make use of the Smarty developement, but will also include phpMailer and Onyx RSS.

Together with Jørn Lind-Nielsen globally available pictures gallery Photoshare and his meta module pagesetter, pnCommerce, PagEd, Content Express and all the other great modules this all sounds great, doesn't it?

The ultimate question remains unanswered: When will .8 be released? pnCore-Team manager Larsneo expects a milestone release in 6-8 weeks. That release will definitely not be ready for productive use and will not feature any update routines. Nevertheless it will enable module developers to test the functionality of they modules under the new enviroment before a first release candidate is ready.