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2013 Jul 21

Something's in the air

By Krazy Kitty on Sunday 21 July 2013, 23:31

Wow! Quite a lot has happened in the Dotclear community recently. Let me try to sum it all up for you.

On July 9th, Franck, who had been in charge of Dotclear since February, around the time when version 2.5 came out, decided to leave and slam the door on his way out.

While he was full of hopes, projects and enthusiasm, the community didn't follow. Team members, from lack of either time or eagerness, were less and less available. The new projects he announced (redesign the admin interface, replace the wysiwyg editor by something more advanced, give the Dotclear and Dotaddict websites a fresh look...) weren't enough to drive the team. Most of all, Franck missed what was for him the most important in Dotclear: the conviviality and team spirit. So Franck was quitting, and what would happen to Dotclear?

The door slamming certainly did one thing: suddenly, the community awoke.

People started talking, on Twitter and the Dotclear blog more particularly. On July 10th, Kozlika started outlining three possible futures for the project.

The first possibility is that a number of new, motivated and energetic developers (and, more generally speaking, contributors of all sorts) join Dotclear. The problem hasn't so much to do with money, marketing or communication, but mostly with contributions. With a vibrant community, there is no doubt that Dotclear can find its second wind.

The second possibility is to focus on simply keeping Dotclear afloat. No major changes, no projects for new features, simply a small team of developers, testers and webmasters devoted to fixing bugs and updating the code with new versions of PHP.

The third possibility is to slowly move to a close. Take the time (one or two years) to help users migrate towards new solutions, to ask the developers of other CMS for migration plugins, and so forth. This only requires a small team of people, with few programming skills, for a short time.

Then Kozlika opened the discussion on the dev mailing list. Everyone, independently of skills, was invited to join. Dozens and dozens of people did. Hundreds of messages were exchanged. Looks like Dotclear's not quite dead yet...

... And, indeed, we're releasing a new version !

Thanks to the wonderful community, changes are coming. Stay tuned for further updates!

one comment

2013 Mar 16

Dotclear 2.5

By Franck on Saturday 16 March 2013, 01:42

As stated in our Dotclear 2.5 Release Candidate announcement, this one mainly sees the thightening of bolts and screws everywhere, and dozens of tickets (say : a lot) closed (don't worry, we kept a few, thus there's still work to be done), some of them long overdue, whatever the reasons.

Among the differences beetween our RC and this release: a couple of bugs have been fixed, and more importantly, we had to fix two security issue comming from the multiple files upload system we're using. We are now planning to replace this (Flash) component by a new one, in Ajax. Expect a 2.5.1 one of these days. :)

The new version is, as usual, available there : http://download.dotclear.org/latest.zip

Let me use my very first annoucement as the new skipper to talk you about a few things I would like to see being worked on in the near future[1]:

  • The revamping of the back-office should benefit from the work currently under progress on the sexy branch, which now includes Twig, in order to make administration of your blog even more friendly and powerful.
  • Still in the back-office, it would be nice to replace the "wysiwyg" editor by something like CKEditor. It is a big job, and we've had so far some unsuccessful trials... well, it is a bit of a holy grail but it would be cool to have that.
  • Make some room for Dotclear 2 by moving Dotclear 1 closer to the attic on Dotclear and DotAddict websites, and harmonise a bit their designs.
  • Progressively abandon PHP versions lower than 5.2[2]

The main idea is to streamline Dotclear to the essential stuff and to externalise everything else in plugins (this is what the sexy branch is all about), to use whatever libraries others do better than we do (a template system, a wysiwyg editor, ...) in order to ease future developments. That being said, such deep changes might have a cost in terms of compatibility, but those questions will be dealt with at the right place, in the right time, we're not there yet.

If ever you're reading this English version of the announcement, it surely means you're a bit too far away for that, but if you have the occasion, feel free to follow the French blog, where we plan to give details about a meet-up in Paris somewhere next month.

Notes

[1] It will mostly depend on everybody's availability and abilities, of course.

[2] This might break compatibility with some shared hosting companies who still run versions of PHP that has been deprecated for seven years. In IT, dinosaurs have been known to disappear in a shorter time.

2 comments

2013 Feb 24

Upcoming 2.5 (and a bit of news)

By xave on Sunday 24 February 2013, 20:00

Today nearly sees the release of Dotclear 2.5: what we release today is a Release Candidate, meaning that we hope it's the real deal, but we'd like it to be tested by a few madmen before releasing it in the wild in a few days.

Why this waryness? We've had a big crash on Dotclear sister server: Dotaddict.org, and we had to stop everything to reinstall it from scratch, and I mean nearly really from scratch, as we discovered in the process that our backup plan hasn't been working for several months (and let that be a warning: automation is good, as long as you automatize some checks in the process.)

And because we had to stop working on that nearly finished 2.5, we prefer now to introduce it slowly, just to be on the safe side.

Users won't find any big changes in it: webfonts can now be used in Ductile and the daInstaller plugin is included in the main release. Other than that, there have been a whole bunch of small changes, both functional and cosmetic. Changes two are to be found for themes and plugins builders, and we can't even count all the small bugs that were fixed. As important for sysadmins: we are confident that Dotclear is now PHP5.4 compatible, for people using top-notch hosting.

Another important bit of news: having got a new job for the last 18 months, I finally had to admit that my schedule doesn't allow me to manage the project any more. It was really becoming a burden and a problem for the project, as I had often had no time to dwell into things. As nobody wants things to stall, waiting for my decisions or approvals, it became important to allow someone else to make those decisions, even if I stay in the team.

That's why we now welcome Franck Paul as the new project manager. It was an easy choice, as Franck not only is an historic member of the Dotclear Team, but is also the guy behind that new release, fixing most of the bugs single-handedly and driving the team for changes. Dotclear won't change: albeit with a role re-distribution, that's still the same team working on it.

And working we are, we're already working on several projects, stay tuned.

Do I forget something? Yep, the 2.5RC: it's now available in the nightlies at http://download.dotclear.org/nightl..., or by defining DC_UPDATE_VERSION to "testing" in your configuration file, if you want to take advantage of the autoupdate feature. The final version should be available within two weeks.

one comment

2012 Aug 13

Dotclear 2.4.4

By xave on Monday 13 August 2012, 13:13

Today, Dotclear is 9 years old, and we can't help but be emotional, thinking that it will leave the house one day. But it calls for a small celebration, so here are three things:

We're starting with a new release. Dotclear 2.4.4 is mostly a bugfix release and you shouldn't notice any difference. Except if you're using the "Program post" feature that was broken in the last release: it's back. Grab the 2.4.4. here: http://download.dotclear.org/latest.zip

In order to clear the backlog of things we'd like not to think about any more: the DC Loader, the script that allows you to install Dotclear in three clicks, has been updated, is now prettier, and is localization ready (only English and French are available, for now, though.) Grab it there: http://download.dotclear.net/loader/dotclear-loader.php

Last but not least, a small pre-announcement: the team has started to work on a Dotclear version nicknamed "Sexy". It should coexist for a while with the good old official one and aims to rewrite a good part of its internals in order to be lighter, quicker, sexier! Watch this space for a future announcement, explaining what it's all about.

2012 May 19

Dotclear 2.4.3

By xave on Saturday 19 May 2012, 20:42

Hi all! Here comes a new Dotclear version. This one has been made necessary by ... well, nothing, really. Just a couple under the hood enhancements, small bugfixes here and there and a new option to hide the shortcuts menu should you wish to do so. As usual, it can be downloaded there : http://download.dotclear.org/latest... or by launching the automatic update from you admin.

2012 Feb 11

Dotclear 2.4.2

By xave on Saturday 11 February 2012, 17:45

Hi all!

Here comes a new Dotclear version. This one has been made necessary because four XSS vulnerabilities have been found this week[1]. No time to lose: we corrected them and here comes Dotclear 2.4.2.

As usual, it can be found there: http://download.dotclear.org/latest.zip

As always, have fun.

Note

[1] By the High-Tech Bridge Security Research Lab.

one comment

2011 Dec 24

I'm dreaming of a white Dotclear

By xave on Saturday 24 December 2011, 20:11

Here is our Christmas surprise: Dotclear 2.4.1.2... We did not skip a version, we just decided to numerate this one specially for Christmas (for the more Americans among you, "24/12" means the 24th day of the 12th month, you date-order-challenged! :)

You won't find many new features in this one, but some small tweaks here and there and the patching of a an SQL injection vulnerability that hid itself so well no one found it until now, except for our forum member Adjaya.

That's all. Enjoy yourself, happy Holidays, have fun!

2 comments

2011 Nov 13

Dotclear 2.4

By xave on Sunday 13 November 2011, 16:13

You can now download our new version:Dotclear 2.4.

In this version, you'll find an new iconset, specilly designed for us by Thomas Daveluy. This allow us to go back to a full GPL distribution, as the version for the icons introduced in Dotclear 2.3 was limited.

You'll also find a new theme, named Ductile, designed to be both easy to adpat to your needs and to fit wathever screen size your readers may use. Along with this theme comes a new plugin, named SimpleMenu, whose purpose is -you guessed it- to allow you to manage a menu of links in a simple way.

This version includes, as is now usual, incremental ergonomic and accessibility modifications. It can be found, as always, at the following URL: http://download.dotclear.org/latest.zip

You may have noticed that two files are attached to this post. once unzipped in the /admin/images/iconset/ folder of your blog[1], they'll allow you to find a new setting in your user preferences, where you will now be able to chose your iconset. Don't let the new icons prevent you from installing the 2.4 if you just loved the 2.3 ones, you can install them if you want.

EDIT: Please note the if you did not apply the changes needed for Dotclear 2.3.1, you will now see a warning in the admin interface.

Notes

[1] That folder has to be created, and each file has to be uncompressed in a specific sub-folder of it. We plan to create a GUI for that feature.

one comment 3 trackbacks 2 attachments

2011 Sep 13

Dotclear 2.4 beta

By xave on Tuesday 13 September 2011, 20:43

The new version promised a month ago is not yet ready (holidays in the team spread from june to this week, I switched jobs and one of us is even getting maried!) but the curious and the bolds can as of now try the new Dotclear 2.4 beta. It includes new icons, a new theme, and other tweaks and functionnalities that will be detailed once we'll get out of beta.

You can download it here.

2 comments

2011 Jun 14

Dotclear 2.3.1

By xave on Tuesday 14 June 2011, 22:22

Here comes another maintenance release for Dotclear. in this one, you'll find:

  • Some internal clean-up for development files that were preventing a clean upgrade under unusual circumstances.
  • Localisation problems have been corrected for our new dashboard system.
  • Cleaning and refining for some CSS & JS files.
  • There were a problem with the user preferences in the import/export module. This has been corrected.
  • You can now configure the email address used to send password reminders.
  • A potential security flaw has been fixed + some others security tightening.

About the last two points:

Starting with this version, the email address for reminders is set up in the config file. On new installations, a default one will be defined. For security reasons, it will not be the case with upgrades. Please add the following line to your inc.config.php file:

define('DC_ADMIN_MAILFROM','dotclear@theaddressyouwant.com');

If you don't do so, Dotclear will work as usual. You'll just raise the password reminders mails' score in antispam system.

About the security fix and tightening: you don't have to worry about the tightening, we just enhanced the security for the software's future life. There is a true security flaw, though, that could have been used under certain rare circumstances to gain access to a administrator account. You are still encouraged to update, better safe than sorry.

Those security enhancements were indicated by Jérémie Boutoille, while he was participating in Pirate-Moi, a monthly hacking contest that chose Dotclear for its last edition.

Dotclear was not hacked during this contest. :)

2011 May 16

Dotclear 2.3

By xave on Monday 16 May 2011, 21:21

Bonjour everybody !

Here comes the brand new Dotclear 2.3. Whereas our last version was targeted towards internal changes that were not obvious to the user, you will notice changes at once with this one, as it includes the first results of the ergonomics and accessibility study we launched several months ago (and that is just a first step, as it is a work in progress.)

favicon

Please allow me to introduce:

  • An admin backend refresh, harmonization and new icons;
  • More accessible forms;
  • A new handling of user preferences;
  • A new safe mode, for those cases where a plugin locks you out;
  • A new configurable side menu.

While we were working, we squashed quite a log of bugs, not all though, to be sure we'll release other versions in the future. New versions where we will also implements ergonomics and accessibility enhancements.

This new version was well received by our beta testers, I do hope you will like it! Have fun!

4 comments

2011 Apr 1

Dotclear 2.2.3

By xave on Friday 1 April 2011, 21:45

We publish tonight a fresh new Dotclear version. Nothing fancy in this one but two changes in the Media Manager: a bugfix for the manual thumbnail regeneration and a security fix.

As usual, the auto-update procedure should notify you of this new version in the next few hours. If you dont want to wait:

2011 Jan 17

Release early, release often: Dotclear 2.2.2

By xave on Monday 17 January 2011, 20:56

Twenty four hours after Dotclear 2.2.1, here comes Dotclear 2.2.2. This quick update has been made necessary because of a bug blocking new installations. We also corrected a small bunch of smaller bugs and more importantly, we made changes to the autoupdate procedure: it should now have a better handling of problems created by a bad FTP client configuration.

You can now go back to your blogs.

one comment

2011 Jan 16

Dotclear 2.2.1

By xave on Sunday 16 January 2011, 20:17

You can now download Dotclear 2.2.1. This maintenance release includes several fixes for bugs discovered since the 2.2 release. Upgrading is recommended as it also includes a security fix.

I would like to thank the Team for the work here, as I have mostly been just a conductor on this version, and it is only a small part of the work there are doing in the shadow for the next couple of big features.

So, please find:

2010 Aug 13

The age of reason

By Philippe on Friday 13 August 2010, 00:01

We celebrate today Dotclear's seventh anniversary, and Dotclear Organization's first accounting year .

Dotclear only makes blogs, and it does it well

This sentence by Dotclear's father, Olivier Meunier, pronounced during delivery of the first version, has been since slightly modified and became Dotclear almost only makes blogs, and it does it well. It is true, Dotclear powers a large number of blogs, really large, and also more and more commercial or non-profit web sites, where its easy and fast tweaking is appreciated. Slowly but surely Dotclear becomes more known everyday, and we can bet it will be surprising us again.

For our favorite blog software, the age of reason has now come, and we wish to thank you all for your participation:

  • users, you are everyday more numerous to join us, and show everywhere your proudly Dotclear-powered blogs to share your ideas and knowledge
  • members of the support forum, you help patiently newcomers and share your tips
  • documentation builders, you work everyday to explain Dotclear's code, track misunderstandings and spelling mistakes
  • translators, you allow Dotclear to reach the whole world, and even soon the galaxy with a future klingon version
  • themes and plugins developers, you add everyday new functions and beautiful layouts to our libraries
  • donators, you helped us to keep our independance, and offer new services and better work

You all, please take a seat at our table, to share with us this birthday cake

Dotclear's birthday is also the Organization's

Today we close this first year's accounts, and here a is a short version of the balance that will be presented to the next general assembly:

  • members have contributed to more than 3.000 €
  • generous donators have on their side contributed to more than 2.000 €

These funds were only used to pay for our servers, no money was spend on cigars and champagne, therefore we still have a bit of cash left for the future

And now ?

Dotclear goes now to big school, and you must be impatient to know what this year will bring as new features. But it is too serious a subject for today, so please relax, have a drink, and sing with us :

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you, Dotclear
Happy birthday toooooo yoooooo !

4 comments

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