Yes, after almost two years Joomlapolis was about due for a facelift. The CB Team has been working with Jacob (who also created the previous Joomlapolis site template) to create this new crispy looking template for our site. This is just the first of many planned steps the CB Team has been preparing over the past months. We will be preparing a dedicated article about the new template and the nice work Jacob has put into it. We will also be announcing the renewed sponsorship of our Web hoster Kreativmedia (here) for one more year - we just recently hit the 400 days uptime mark on our dedicated server!

We have been working on CB 1.1 (released 2 weeks ago) and since then both Beat and myself have answered a couple of hundred forums posts (each of us) related with community issues around CB 1.1 and its coexistence with Joomla or Mambo CMS installations.

The Community Builder suite extends the Joomla! and Mambo website user management systems and allows to manage those users.

Key features include: extra fields in profile, enhanced registration workflows, user lists, connection paths between users, admin defined tabs and user profiles, image upload, front-end workflow management, integration with other components, like PMS, Newsletter, Forum, Galleries.

Joomla 1.0.13 and 1.5 RC 1:

Please note that CB 1.0.2 is not compatible with Joomla 1.0.13 and 1.5 RC 1, but CB 1.1 is compatible with all versions of Joomla (except beta versions).

You need to update CB to CB 1.1 first, before updating Joomla to Joomla 1.0.13.

Before updating to Joomla 1.0.13, you need to be aware of the problems and solutions, as discussed in this forum.

Well, if you already updated Joomla to 1.0.13, simply update CB to CB 1.1.

One interesting side-effect of CB 1.1 is that it adapts the database storage to the host CMS, meaning you can also downgrade from Joomla 1.0.13 to Joomla 1.0.12 or any previous version, if needed while keeping the CMS database compatible.

Mambo 4.6.2:

Please note that CB 1.1 is compatible with latest Mambo 4.5.2 to 4.6.2 natively, without any changes. CB 1.0.2 was compatible with Mambo 4.5.0 - 4.5.5 (and with 4.6.2, with a simple change in the login module).

IMPORTANT TEMPORARY NOTICE:

Joomla 1.0.13 Stable has been released in its current SVN state to our surprise.

Joomla 1.0.13 breaks backwards compatibility with itself (you can't downgrade to anything before joomla 1.0.13), and with some extensions like Community Builder and bridges, and is not compatible with CB 1.0.2 or earlier.

Additionally, some vulnerabilities introduced by the RC3 that we reported privately did not get fixed

Our strong advice: do NOT upgrade to Joomla 1.0.13 for now.

CB Team feels sorry to have to make this announcement. I'm personaly part of Joomla Q&T team and CB test-team tests Joomla pre-releases too. Unfortunately fixes for bugs and vulnerabilities identified in 1.0.13 RC3 were not made available to Joomla Q&T team and CB test-team for further testing prior to public release. This issue has just been addressed by CB team to Joomla core team, and we are waiting for a reply. Update 25.7.2007 5:30am: the release processes inside Joomla for future releases have been reviewed and clarified, and communication resynchronized, thanks a lot, Robin :) . With the new Joomla! release procedures,we trust that the mishap will not happen again for future Joomla! releases.

UPDATE 23.7.2007 11:30pm: A user has provided a temporary patch for CB 1.0.2 in forum thread, as an alternative to downgrading for those who saw this message to late. Thank you pasamio :) . It might work or not for your site, please check the forum thread. CB team and testteam didn't test or review this patch, and is continuing working on CB 1.1, which is in testteam beta build 3 with all bugs from previous build 2 fixed and should be released soon after tests starting on production servers tomorrow, with many new features, and addressing that incompatibility. Btw: CB 1.0.2 is not compatible with Joomla! 1.5 RC 1, but CB 1.1 will be.

UPDATE 25.7.2007 5:30am: We have worked day and night to stabilize CB 1.1, which is right now in CB test-team as beta build 4 with all bugs from previous build 3 fixed (as well as bugs from those fixes !) and should be released soon after tests starting on production servers which will be starting today. Of course, CB 1.1 will include full support for latest Joomla! 1.0.13, Joomla 1.5 RC1 and Mambo 4.6.2. Precision 25.7.2005 1pm: CB 1.1 includes also support for any previous Joomla 1.0.x release (1.0.0 - 1.0.12) as well as for any Mambo releases since Mambo 4.5.2 (Mambo 4.5.0 and 4.5.1 might work as well, but hasn't been tested by lack of any testers using those anymore. CB 1.0.2 supports Mambo releases from 4.5.0 up to 4.5.5 fully, as well as Joomla! 1.5 beta 1). Regarding Joomla 1.5 series, CB 1.1 has support for Joomla 1.5 RC1 and current SVN only (no 1.5 beta support). We hope and will participate to Joomla! Q&T WG tests so that 1.5 RC2 and 1.5 Stable stay compatible with CB 1.1, otherwise we will be releasing an update if needed ;) . CB has also been tested successfully against a pre-beta of Mambo 4.7, here it's same, if an update is needed for final release, we will try our best with the information that we have to release in synchronization with the CMS.

Also, a full description and instructions for Joomla! 1.0.13 have now been published by Joomla core team today and can be seen on www.joomla.org. Please take this time to carefully read this document, check also the compatibility of your other extensions, in particular bridges and E-commerce applications, and make a full backup of your site (files and database), and if it's an important site, a testing-clone if you don't have already one. Good progress is being made and we hope to be replacing in very few days this notice by the CB 1.1 release announcement as was originally planed in synchronization with Joomla! :)

UPDATE 29.7.2007: CB 1.1 beta build 5 made it through testteam, and some bugs have been found, most of them fixed, others will be fixed tomorrow. We will be looking towards final tests tomorrow, so that we expect a public release in the next days. We should be having more info here on Tuesday.

UPDATE 30.7.2007: CB 1.1 beta build 6 has just landed at CB testteam, with all known bugs fixed, for final tests. Public release expected in next days :) .

UPDATE 2.8.2007: CB 1.1 RC private build 1 has just landed at CB testteam, with all known bugs fixed, for very final non-regression tests. Public release expected in next 24 hours :) :) :) . Please watch this page (RSS feed should be ok as well), or subscribe to the discussion thred for news.

UPDATE 3.8.2007: Today, we released a RC private build 2 to CB testteam, fixing a blocking bug, and CB testteam did a good job at finding and reporting a dozen real bugs, some of which could get fixed right away, some took more time. We just finished fixing one of the bugs, which brings some more freedom in ordering all the tabs on the registration form independantly of the profile: in cleartext: it's a bug-fix which braught a new feature with it: name and username don't need to be first fields on registration form anymore. Some more fixing is scheduled for tomorrow (6 bugs remaining on the list), as well as a private RC 3 build to testteam tomorrow too, and a last test-round on Sunday. This sets us for a release on Monday, as seen from now. We want this one to be very stable and very compatible with all the configurations, so it takes some time. Now if you got real time this week-end for testing and helping find bugs and fixes, there is still room in our CB testteam (see below on this page on how to join the party).

UPDATE 7.8.2007: Last night, we released a RC private build 3 to CB testteam, fixing all reported bugs from RC2, and it's being tested hard by CB testteam as we write this. So far it looks quite good, only one bug reported, which will get fixed. We will release when it's ready and approved by both CB core team and CB testteam. Thanks for your patience, helping us to release a solid CB 1.1.

UPDATE 8.8.2007: Ok, we are nearing release for sure, testteam is now almost done testing RC private build 5 (yes, 6 six beta builds and 5 (five) RC went through cb team testing !), last one got some minor problems reported, that we are fixing. There is lots of activity on cb testteam these days, and it's looking really good.

UPDATE 8.8.2007: CB 1.1 is beeing released.

Packt Publishing Book Store is looking for people to submit names of Open Source Content Management Systems for its 2007 awards process. There are 5 categories for nominations and the CB Team believes that the fifth category is a nice fit for its Joomla/Mambo Community Builder CMS solution.

So please visit the ‘Nominate the Best Open Source Social Networking CMS’ webpage at http://www.packtpub.com and submit your nomination for Joomla/Mambo Community Builder (please use this exact wording to build up proper momentum). With your vote/nomination you will be indirectly supporting our efforts and further developments. Don't forget to vote in other appropriate categories for your preferred CMS.

Thank you!