vBulletin 3.0.0 Beta 3 - Public Beta
It's been a long wait, but it's finally here. vBulletin license holders are encouraged to download and try out vBulletin 3 for the first time in the form of Beta 3.
On behalf of the whole vBulletin team, I would like to thank all our customers for being so patient during the long development process this version has undergone. We hope you find that the wait was worth it.
As a 'thank you' to our customers for waiting this long, we will be extending the expiry date of most customers' licenses for three months. If you have a currently active license, you will find that the expiry date is now three months later than it was before, and if your license expired after March 31st 2003, you will find that it is now active again, and will expire three months from today.
The purpose of the public beta is to allow you, administrators and users of vBulletin boards to get acquainted with the system before its final release, and to find any remaining bugs that may need to be fixed. To that end, we hope that some of you will upgrade your vBulletin installations to vBulletin 3 in order to help with the testing procedures and to identify any remaining issues. It goes without saying that the more boards that install the new version, the better the feedback we will get on the system and the quicker we will be able to deliver the final 'Gold' version.
This is a beta release, so please keep all questions relating to vBulletin 3 on the forums, rather than using the official support ticket system. Any tickets submitted that relate to beta software will be redirected to the forums.
Here are some things you should know about this release:
Things that will change between this version and the first Release Candidate:
Below you will find instructions detailing how to upgrade a vBulletin 2 board to vBulletin 3, and instructions for installing a fresh vBulletin 3.
In conclusion, as it is customary to say around these parts, Off to the members' area!
It's been a long wait, but it's finally here. vBulletin license holders are encouraged to download and try out vBulletin 3 for the first time in the form of Beta 3.
On behalf of the whole vBulletin team, I would like to thank all our customers for being so patient during the long development process this version has undergone. We hope you find that the wait was worth it.
As a 'thank you' to our customers for waiting this long, we will be extending the expiry date of most customers' licenses for three months. If you have a currently active license, you will find that the expiry date is now three months later than it was before, and if your license expired after March 31st 2003, you will find that it is now active again, and will expire three months from today.
The purpose of the public beta is to allow you, administrators and users of vBulletin boards to get acquainted with the system before its final release, and to find any remaining bugs that may need to be fixed. To that end, we hope that some of you will upgrade your vBulletin installations to vBulletin 3 in order to help with the testing procedures and to identify any remaining issues. It goes without saying that the more boards that install the new version, the better the feedback we will get on the system and the quicker we will be able to deliver the final 'Gold' version.
This is a beta release, so please keep all questions relating to vBulletin 3 on the forums, rather than using the official support ticket system. Any tickets submitted that relate to beta software will be redirected to the forums.
Here are some things you should know about this release:
- The new style is not yet complete. The templates are based upon the old vBulletin 2 templates, so you should expect to see the new versions at the Release Candidate stage.
- Due to the new templates not being complete at this stage, the templates still contain hard-coded text elements. This means that it is (almost) pointless to translate the templates, as they will change before the final release.
- The control panels are fully integrated with the new language system. You can start to translate all phrases that you find in the language system and these translations will not be lost or made redundant when you upgrade to the final version. In fact, we would actively encourage non-english boards to attempt to use the translation tools so that we can get feedback on any changes that need to be made.
- Right-to-left language support is included, but there are some minor layout issues that we hope to have fixed before too long.
Things that will change between this version and the first Release Candidate:
- The biggest change between this version and the first Release Candidate will be the templates. Some template names and template contents will almost certainly change, so for this reason you should not be too precious with your style customizations with this version. By all means play with the style system and get used to the way it works, but be aware that major customizations will have to be re-done at the Release Candidate or Gold stage.
- We plan to work towards integrating more processors into vBulletin for paid subscriptions. At present, the only stable processor is Paypal, but there are plans to integrate WorldPay and Nochex before the final release.
- Writers of hacks should be aware that at the moment, there is code in the system to re-register Get/Post/Cookie variables as Globals for any scripts that do not have NO_REGISTER_GLOBALS defined as a constant. However, this code will be removed in a forthcoming release, so you should make sure that any variables you expect to be submitted via GPC are referenced through the new globalize() function, which you will find in functions.php.
Below you will find instructions detailing how to upgrade a vBulletin 2 board to vBulletin 3, and instructions for installing a fresh vBulletin 3.
In conclusion, as it is customary to say around these parts, Off to the members' area!
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