After winning the “Project of the Month” Award in August at SourceForge, world’s largest repository of OpenSource projects (link), the XOOPS Project is proud to present XOOPS 2.6.0 Alpha 1.
This is a brand new XOOPS series, with several major changes and enhancements to the Core. You can review the current XOOPS 2.6.0 Roadmap at: http://xoops.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6339
The main goal of the 2.6 series is to update the XOOPS Core and all classes to PHP 5.4, refactor old legacy code and separate all HTML code from PHP.
Some of the main changes in Alpha 1:
- Central class “xoops” to simplify the development of XOOPS modules, giving developers direct access to XOOPS API
- Automatic loading of all XOOPS classes
- Removal of global variables
- Central folder for all multimedia public frameworks (jQuery, CSS, JS, images, …).
- Module Class Admin to give the same admin interface for all modules
- Refactoring the system module.
- Adding a new feature: System Extensions
- Integration of CSS Framework: Bootstrap from Twitter.
- Removal of all queries for the block templates and modules.
- Reduction of queries in all pages.
- New theme in the Admin interface.
XOOPS 2.6.0 represents a major step to simplify XOOPS and make it more user as well as developer friendly. The main features of XOOPS are full modularization where modules can be installed/uninstalled/activated/deactivated with a mouse click, its versatile Group Permissions System, and a theme-based skinnable interface, where both webmasters and users can change the look of the entire website with just a click of a mouse.
There are over thousand of themes and modules available for free download. With the most popular modules like News, Discussion Forums, Photo Galleries, Calendars, Jobs and Classifieds, Polls, and Video presentations, it's very easy for anyone to set up a “Community Website”. And since XOOPS is Open Source, the users can also contribute back to the development.
In the current economic downturn, Open Source software has become increasingly attractive to users and companies, as well as to governments, as it helps them to save a lot of money. This is especially valid for young democracies, like Libya.
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To learn more or download the latest version of Xoops, visit their website @ Xoops.org
