Version 1.6 brings with it a host of new features and changes such as:

• Bundle jQuery by default to enable plugin and template authors to easier provide extended functionality to the frontend
• Support for templates, so that they can also use config-groups like plugins already have (added to bulletproof template)
• Templates can now enable core-provided options like a global navigation setup
• Fixed a bug in the automatic media database synchronization that did not properly add new files with the same basename but different file extensions
• Added a .htaccess parameter to prevent IE9 CSS-trouble
• API changes: Added “shortcuts” to commonly used constructs (language loading, hack protection)
• Several minor feature additions in plugins (Karma, Akismet, Mailer) and the core (comment subscriptions, multiple comment moderation)
• Fulltextsearch improvements with “*” expansion
• Added a “hidden” option for specific author groups, so that their members are not revealed on usual author listings by plugins etc.
• Fixes a backend XSS issue in the karma plugin and media database filtering, thanks to Stefan Schurtz!

The current release can be easily installed on any previous Serendipity installation. Just unpack, upload and visit your admin panel to perform possible database upgrades. Upon first login with an old password, Serendipity will store your old password in the new format – please be sure to make a backup of your Database prior to upgrading.

You can download or learn more about Serendipity from their website, http://www.s9y.org/

Serendipity 1.5.2 was released to address the outstanding issue of SQLite installations with Serendipity. Full details on the release can be found at the release announcement on s9y.org.

You can download the latest release from s9y.org as well.

Serendipity

(note: after we wrote this article, there was a bug found so the newest version is actually 1.5.1)

Additional details from the release announcement:

This version mainly addresses login security by changing our method how passwords are stored to use salted SHA1 checksums instead of plain MD5 checksums. This makes password retrieval (rainbow attacks, see special blog posting) through the database virtually impossible. Another thing is improved PHP 5.3 compatibility.

For users of our Bundled WYSIWYG-Editor Xinha users now have the ability to easily customize the appearance of this panel through a “my_custom.js” file inside the template directory (a draft of such a file can be found as fallback default in the htmlarea/subdirectory).

One cool new feature for developers is that now also templates can register themselves inside the plugin API hooks to execute specific things, that don’t require installation of an event plugin.

Other news include:

• new event API hooks
• fixed PDF nail generation
• ability to auto-scroll on borders when Drag/Dropping plugins
• UTC server time zone support
• improvements in the Smarty functions to easier use Serendipity as a CMS for individual entry output.
• quicksearch improvements for doing a wildcard-search when too few searchresults were found on a fixed searchterm
• support for Typepad anti-spam server-checks, additionally to Akismet

Minor improvements since the 1.5-beta1 release:

• more PHP 5.3.0 compatibility improvements
• Disallow uploading any files that contain “.php.” in the filename for extra security with Apache MimeMagic-Modules
• expermiental PDO:SQlite support
• usability improvements for the comment moderation panel (bottom-navigation, removed border increase)

Grab your copy today at the Serendipity website.