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[TWiki-Announce] Announcement: TWiki-5.1.0 Community Release
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From: TWiki a. - r. s. a. n. \(l. volume\) <twi...@li...> - 2011-09-01 06:03:50
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Dear TWiki administrator: TWiki-5.1.0 Community Release aka Istanbul Release is now available for download from the http://twiki.org/ website. The primary focus of the TWiki-5.1.0 release is usability, such as point and click user data management, more visual user profile pages with picture selector, and a backup feature that helps upgrade TWiki sites. The new release also strengthens TWiki as an application platform to more easily build custom wiki applications. As for the last two years, this new release is rock solid. Upgrade is recommended to this TWiki-5.1.0 release. NOTE: If you need a suite of applications to build your social network, manage your teams and projects, and don't want to build it yourself, we invite you to try out the new Twiki Workspaces OnDemand or OnSite. Sign up for a free trial at http://www.twiki.net/twiki_workspaces.html Table of contents: * Changes and Upgrade * What is TWiki * TWiki Community - Get Involved! * TWiki User Community * TWiki Support, Services and Hosting * Call for Papers! ______________________________________________________________ ---++ CHANGES AND UPGRADE The TWiki-5.1 (code named Istanbul) release brings many usability enhancements (such as point and click user data management, more visual user profile pages with picture selector, and a backup feature that helps upgrade TWiki sites) and strengthens TWiki as an application platform (such as a new macro language with parameterized variables). The TWiki-5.0.x and TWiki-5.1.0 releases have shown to be much more stable than TWiki releases prior to 2009, mainly attributed to the community's new focus on usability and quality. We invite developers who appreciate quality to join us, http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/GettingInvolved ! TWiki is now localized to Bulgarian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian. To date, more than 250 extensions have been tested and enhanced for TWiki-5.1. ---+++ TWiki-5.1 Community Release Feature Highlights * Usability Enhancements * More visual user profile pages with in-place editing of form fields and picture selector * In-place editing of TWiki group settings using PreferencesPlugin * Point and click bookmarks for better usability * Improved statistics showing overall site usage over time, such as total number of webs, topics, users, etc * API and GUI for point and click user data management * Support disabled users in password manager * TWiki Application Platform Enhancements * New macro language with parameterized variables * Ability to auto-create page on view if it does not exist * Relative heading levels for INCLUDE * Relative heading levels for SEARCH * Security Enhancements * Set a flag to force password change on next login * S/Mime support for notification e-mails * Plugin Enhancements * New BackupRestorePlugin to easily backup, restore and upgrade TWiki installations * New SetGetPlugin that can store variables persistently * New ColorPickerPlugin to pick a color in form fields * SpreadSheetPlugin now has over 90 functions, including new BITXOR(), HEXENCODE(), HEXDECODE(), XOR() ---+++ More Visual User Profile Pages Previous user profile pages had a bare bone look and the form fields were more tailored for public TWiki sites. TWiki-5.1 brings a more visual and more modern page layout with profile picture selector, as well as default form fields tailored for the workplace. Screenshots: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiPressRelease05x01#UserProfile ---+++ Point and Click Bookmarks A new bookmark feature has been introduced that replaces the personal left-bar links. Bookmarking a page is now a simple point and click operation: In the Account pulldown menu, select "Bookmark this page...". Existing bookmarks can be managed with an edit table, accessible via the "----- Bookmarks -----" pulldown menu of the Account pulldown. Screenshot: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiPressRelease05x01#BookMarks ---+++ Improved Statistics Showing Overall Site Usage TWiki used to generate just web statistics in each web. TWiki-5.1 now generates also overall site usage statistics shown in the Main.SiteStatistics page. For each month, the following items are recorded using system data and TWiki log data across all webs: Total number of webs, number of webs viewed, number of webs updated, total number of topics, number of topics viewed, number of topics updated, number of attachments, number of topic views, number of topic updates, number of files uploads, data size, pub size, disk use, number of users, number of groups, number of plugins installed compared to number of plugins available, and 10 top contributors. Nice graphs are shown in case the ChartPlugin is installed. Screenshot: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiPressRelease05x01#SiteStats ---+++ API and GUI for Point and Click User Data Management TWiki-5.1 introduces a new API and GUI to manage user data. It enhances the user mapping and password managers TWiki already has with point and click user management. Password managers can declare their own data (fields with name, value, type and an optional note) so that TWiki's user manager can show queries and forms to display and manipulate user data in a transparent way. It is a data driven design that can be extended easily. Screenshot: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiPressRelease05x01#UserData ---+++ New Plugin to Easily Backup, Restore and Upgrade TWiki TWiki has now a solution to backup, restore and upgrade TWiki sites. It can be used via browser and on the command line. Backup can be done as a scheduled task to a directory of choice, including a mounted volume on a remote server. The new BackupRestorePlugin is pre- installed in TWiki-5.1; it can be installed in older TWiki releases as low as TWiki-2001-09-01 (Athens Release) to easily create a backup that can be restored on a new TWiki release. This offers an easy upgrade path for TWiki. Screenshot: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiPressRelease05x01#BackupRestore ---+++ Details and Upgrade Details are listed in the release notes at: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/TWiki/TWikiReleaseNotes05x01 To upgrade from earlier TWiki releases follow the instructions at: http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/TWiki/TWikiUpgradeGuide Watch http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins.BackupRestorePlugin for an updated plugin version. Once the web-based restore feature is implemented it will be easy to backup an old TWiki and restore content to a new TWiki. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody involved in making this release happen! Release manager George Trubisky built this TWiki-5.1.0 release. The change history with many contributors is listed at: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/TWiki/TWikiHistory#IstanbulRelease ______________________________________________________________ ---++ WHAT IS TWIKI The TWiki.org community is committed to building the leading open source enterprise wiki and application platform with an extensible plugin architecture. Users without programming skills can create web applications. Developers can integrate TWiki applications with other enterprise applications. The open source TWiki.org project is focused on quality, stability & performance that you can depend on. While we regularly release new features, we put a priority on maintaining quality, stability & performance over releasing new features too quickly. The open source TWiki.org is founded in 1998 by Peter Thoeny and managed by a team of open-source software engineers around the world. It is an active project with more than 5,000 downloads per month, 200+ contributors, more than 500,000 downloads and over 1 Million users across 130 countries in 14+ languages worldwide, including Cisco Systems, Google, IBM, Lufthansa, Morgan Stanley, Motorola, Nokia, Oracle, TI, UBS and many more. TWiki.org is backed by TWiki, Inc, providing enterprise collaboration solutions and services based on the TWiki Community Release. The company is actively sponsoring the TWiki community with code enhancements, twiki.org hosting, meetups, developer summits and advocacy. TWiki is released as Free Software under the GNU/GPL (General Public License). TWiki is a registered trademark of Peter Thoeny, Twiki Inc. ______________________________________________________________ ---++ TWIKI COMMUNITY - GET INVOLVED! Get involved at: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/GettingInvolved We average now over 200 Subversion commits a month, with a steady increase over the last 2 years. Although we have a lot of developer activity, we are still quite a small community. We are looking to grow our community and we invite you to get involved! We now have a more predictable governance model based on the successful Ubuntu community, designed to get away from personality driven decision making and politics to a friendly community that has a clear mission and development processes. This means that you as a developer get to work with contributors that are really focused on building the best technology. We have an expanded TWiki Project Charter with many exciting projects, see http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/TWiki/TWikiCharter and http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiRoadMap Are you a developer, tech writer or marketeer with interest in open source? Have you ever participated in an open source community? It's lots of fun to collaborate on a common goal. The twiki.org community is looking for new contributors. As a contributor you can actively make a difference and help shape the product. To get started, visit: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/GettingInvolved We'd love to get you involved! A good way to get started is to meet the TWiki team at a release meetings on IRC channel #twiki_release on chat.freenode.net - the next one is on Monday 2011-05-09, 17:00 GMT, http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/IstanbulReleaseMeeting2011x05x09. TWiki has now more than 400 Add-ons, Plugins, Contribs and Skins available. We have lots of ideas for additional extensions and for improving existing ones. Enhancing an extension is also a good way to get started with TWiki development. More on that at: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/WebHome and http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/GettingInvolved ______________________________________________________________ ---++ TWIKI USER COMMUNITY Wouldn't it be great to meet fellow TWiki champions in your neighborhood to exchange ideas and best practices? We started to organize TWiki user meetups in Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Silicon Valley and Zurich. Please organize one in your town too! Helpful people on twiki.org will assist you. More at: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiMeetUps ______________________________________________________________ ---++ TWIKI SUPPORT, SERVICES AND HOSTING The Support web at TWiki.org is available for people who have a technical questions or questions about TWiki deployment. This support forum is for TWiki users by TWiki users. The TWiki community keeps an eye on postings, but doesn't necessarily answer questions. In practice, contributors and users are actively discussing and helping out! Get TWiki community support at: http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Support/WebHome If you prefer IRC you can use the #twiki channel on chat.freenode.net to get in touch with the TWiki community. A number of consultants provide consulting services to help you customize TWiki, see: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiConsultants Twiki, Inc. at http://www.twiki.net also provides training and support. TWiki user and champion training help you use the TWiki platform effectively. ______________________________________________________________ ---++ TWIKI DEPLOYMENT AND ADVOCACY It is mainly used behind corporate firewalls and has grown into a mission critical system at many major corporations such as Google, Motorola, Nokia, Oracle and Texas Instruments! In case you installed TWiki on your server we invite you to list your TWiki at: http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Main/TWikiInstallation Word of mouth is a good way of spreading TWiki - your help is greatly appreciated! More exposure means more contributions, and a better system! Please help spread the word in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs etc. You can point your connections to the blog post at: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Blog/BlogEntry201108x1 - short link is: http://bit.ly/twRel51 Sample tweet you could use: New TWiki-5.1 release available, primary focus is usability. Overview with screenshots: http://bit.ly/twRel51 #e20 #enterprise #wiki Your help in spreading the word of the new release is greatly appreciated! To promote TWiki in magazines and web sites use the material at: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiAdvocacy05x01 ______________________________________________________________ ---++ CALL FOR PAPERS! If you have a successful deployment of TWiki, we would really appreciate if you could support the TWiki project by writing a TWiki success story. This helps in promoting the platform, leading to more contributions, and a continuously improving product! Read more on this at: http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Main/TWikiSuccessStories Last but not least, thanks for contributing many ideas, code, docs, quality and more! Best regards and happy TWiki'ing, Peter, on behalf of the TWiki community -- * Peter Thoeny, CTO - peter.thoeny.public[at]twiki.net * http://twiki.net - Twiki, Inc. - Enterprise Agility * http://twiki.org - is your team already TWiki enabled? * Knowledge cannot be managed, it can be discovered and shared * This e-mail is: (_) private (_) ask first (x) public |