Zikula Blog

It's been quite a while since I publicly reported news from core development. We are reaching very near a public beta for Zikula 1.3.0 so now is a good time to give an update.

Yesterday Facebook announced the release of "HipHop for PHP". HipHop translates classic PHP code over to C++ for faster execution times with less CPU use.

Yesterday Google announced to completely drop support for IE6 and although we know what hideous beast the IE6 was and that it deserves to die, there is a lot more behind that: Google really pushed forward towards HTML5 - google.com already is HTML5 and you can test Youtube in HTML5. Why are they so keen on it?

"Free software is not really about software in this fundamental sense; it's about bringing freedom to users through software.", says Benjamin Mako Hill of Free Software Foundation in his "Annual Free Software Foundation Membership Drive Appeal" and he explains why the fight for free software is more important than ever.

The version RC1 of the module Files is available. You can download the module from here or test it creating a new account here (in this web site is included the Xinha plug-in). Please test it and report any bug or do as many suggestions as you want in the address typed below:

http://code.zikula.org/multizk (create your tickets)

This module is part of the bigger module Multisites (soon also available), but it can work alone.

Today I had a problem: I am working on a theme that is supposed to use AJAX. Now Zikula only offers it's own AJAX solution for modules only. And I asked on the developers' list how I can solve this problem. And I thought I get a low level do it yourself AJAX recommendation. But au contraire...

I am currently picking up work on "Noobtheme". I started two themes some months ago: Basetheme and Noobtheme. Both to help start with themes. While basetheme is a minimal theme that you can install and hang you CSS tinsel on via text editor, Noobtheme addresses the need of newbies for a nice looking basic theme that they can customize. It was the first theme to make extensive use of themevariables. But themevariables are hidden in the administration, which made me take it to the next level.

Out with the old and in with the new? We not quite, but since the release of PHP more than 5 years ago, it's finally time we all took the responsible action and left PHP 4. Most webhosts are using PHP 5 and those that aren't need a wake up call.

The Zikula Project will now cease support for PHP 4 in the next major release of Zikula Core, version 1.3.0 slated for late January 2010.

This will open up many possibilities for both Core development and for 3rd party module developers.

The version 2.1 of Intraweb is available. The installation is also available in English.

To create the Intraweb no single line of the core of Zikula has been changed, but a set of modules that improve communication in communities of users have been incorporated.

The version 2.1 is based on Zikula 1.1.2. Apart from the system modules, the Intraweb incorporates some modules extracted from the database of 3rd party and 18 modules created specially for the project that I outline below.

Download Intraweb 2.1

One of the huge advantages of Open Source is that rather than re-design the egg every time, we can take advantage of code that's already been written and use it in our own project. In theory we can just drop it in and forget about it.