Since I have PHP5 and MySQL5 installed on my new PC, I decided to play around with some of the new features (a bit late, I know). Three that really caught my attention were triggers, views and stored procedures. [...]
We have added a "Wiki" for building our vBlogetin documentation. We're not sure if this will be a permanent solution, but I am hoping so. The success of this depends greatly on user contribution - meaning you guys have to help us help you. [...]
We are looking to release beta 3 to the pre-release testers on January 1st, and a few days after that release it to the public. Most of the functionality is done, so that means we are just doing some final touches and going through some of the requests made in the forums now. If you would like to be in the pre-release team, fire me a PM to see if you qualify. [...]
I've been playing around with Smarty more and more and I am finding it increasingly better than vBulletin's template engine. I'll go over some of the pros and cons of each system, and touch upon how they work. [...]
Well, I have finally restored my site! After vBlogetin started to build momentum, I added a forum for it at SirAdrian.com. A few months later, decided to move the whole thing to a new domain name, and to keep all the links and things intact, I just used a redirect to do so (killing my actual site). It's time for me to move back in! [...]
So far, the mod rewrite rules are working for the formats we promised, and vBlogetin can handle them fine (without passing the userid). The big task here is going to be updating all the links to use generated links based on your URL settings. We probably have about 10% of them done so far (the really obvious ones), and we're probably going to leave a few as-is and do a quick redirect upon arriving at an outdated URL. Actually editing the links will bypass the need for vbSEO, but we will use its functions when they are available. [...]
We're glad to announce that beta 2 has been released to the public. This release mainly includes new install, uninstall and upgrade scripts, as well as the lovely template editing front-end that will save lives. Another new feature is a WordPress importer built for us by rdm. There are at least 20-30 minor bug fixes since beta 1, so we strongly recommend that everyone upgrades ASAP. [...]
First off, beta 2 is pretty much done now. There are a few loose ends to tie up before we release it publicly, and it will be given to the beta testers tomorrow if all goes well. The install, upgrade and uninstall scripts are all working flawlessly so far. Even the newly built template editor is working great. [...]
The shiny new install, upgrade and uninstall scripts for beta 2 have been completed now, though of course we will continue to test them rigorously. Everything has been broken into steps so you get a visual clue of what's happening (similar to standard vBulletin installs). Also, things like the template editor now prompt you so you can enter which styles you would like to edit. [...]
I spent some time today modifying the vbJournal importer to be more... solid. There is nothing wrong with the current one, but the new one will has some admin-interaction and has been broken into steps. It will also process X items at a time opposed to trying to do it all in one go. It's done now and seems to be working 100% (test database containing 8000 entries and over 30,000 comments). It takes a bit longer, but it should be much more stable, especially in regard to timing out. You guys may see it as soon as beta 1-2 which we will release pretty soon. [...]
Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm proud to announce that beta 1 has finally been released to the public! There have been many major structural changes since alpha 9 so this is a major release. For those of you who don't know, we have been developing this product for 8 months now, and it is finally at the beta stage! [...]
The beta testing is going smoothly. Many bugs have been reported and fixed, and I believe that there are only 2 minor bugs at the moment. I've resisted the urge to tear it apart and delay it by a month but only because I think I'd get beaten up by you guys.
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I just released vBlogetin Beta 1 to the beta testers. Finally! I'm not sure how long we will give them to break it (well hopefully not too much!) but you guys should be getting your hands on it pretty soon I think. I for one am very excited. 
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Both the blog (entries) and the entry (comments) feeds have been fixed. For the entries, we were using the "entry" tag from an old template version where we should have instead been using "item. Comments also had incorrect "link" and "guid" values. [...]
We were finally able to install vBlogetin today! This will be used as a demo for the product, and also to power our news. Feel free to setup a blog of your own and toy around with it as much as you'd like. That's what it's there for! [...]
I'm nearly done with the permission changes (which I am very happy with), I think the last area I need to fix is the comment stuff and I'm about to do that now. We've also been fixing bugs and there just aren't that many left! [...]
Again!! Okay, this is the last time, I promise. I completely tore this thing to shreds because it wasn't working. I was having to pass large arrays like $blogsettings, $entry, $comment all the time without any references. I was having to pass more than 1 piece of data too sometimes, and that was impossible without using global variables. This became a huge problem with scope causing random bugs. [...]
The blog buddy list has been moved onto the blog settings page (not sure why it wasn't always here...) and placed it inside the Private Blog area. An option has been added (on by default) to synchronize users' vBulletin buddy lists with their blog buddy lists. If it is enabled, it will collapse the buddy list area and whenever you save your vBulletin buddy list it will update both lists. Users can always uncheck the box, and have another customized list here. [...]
The past month I had some family issues to take care of which cut my coding time by 2-3 solid hours a day, and also completely shot my ability to focus. Things should start picking up again because I'll be working full time again on Monday. This weekend I will be continuing with bug fixes and some other minor changes. [...]
I'm on a role tonight! I fixed another major bug which I just found upon releasing alpha 9 on my site. I never noticed it earlier, because it has to do with those pesky timezone settings. If any of you havn't noticed yet: most of you will have the calendar displaying a very incorrect ... for the lack of a better term: layout. It ends on 29 and starts offset. On all the sites I looked at, it was actually a July calendar. It wasn't a major bug because it didn't affect anything - just appearance. All the links remainted intact. [...]
The other thing I've been working on a lot lately is the template editing system. I've made some minor improvements to the class file itself, such as more logging options. The developer can now choose to log to file, database, throw fatal (configurable) errors, or log silently to an array as it is now. This will prove extremely useful, to something such as my next paragraph... [...]
