Regarding BetaZone and Updates

[Ryan Roos]

BetaZone

BetaZone hasn't started yet, but it will very soon. Many of you are aware that certain people have made it into BetaZone already. This is just our soft launch. Our initial batch of testers. Our guinea pigs.

We need to make sure the BetaZone is going to work for everyone who signed up. In order to to that we have to have a BetaZone Beta. That's whats happening right now. Selections were made by Martyn and Patrick. Many based off of who we witnessed being active Beta Testers on the v5 forum.

Once BetaZone starts we will start going down the list of people who signed up. Everyone will get a chance to test out the v5 software.

Martyn has added a new feature which allows you to create a new forum if you don't want to copy an existing one. All in all things are moving along quite well. Stay tuned.

Regarding Updates

BetaZone is still a Beta. And while we are doing are best to finalize things there may still be updates to the plugins or theme areas. If this happens there is always the chance that existing Plugins or Themes may not work properly anymore.

The good news is that 99% of the time it will likely just be a simple tweak or the recreation of the plugin within the newer system. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes. Authors (coders) this is a good time to use the version numbers that the plugin has. You can bump up your version number if you need to make an updated plugin. You could also include a date or note that says the current plugin is pre-launch and include a disclaimer if you wish.

We just wanted to remind everyone that we are still in Beta, there is still a chance things could break. Thank you.

[Peter]

Hi Ryan,

Do you know roughly when the latest changes to the plugin system will go out?

Am holding off doing anything at the moment due to some changes to the system that will be coming. I have created / started some plugins already, however some of them will benefit from the newer changes, or are needed.

So far though, the plugin system is great. Have used it a lot the last few days, really does make things so much easier for us developers.

Thanks

[Ryan Roos]

Hi Peter,

The couple changes I'm aware of actually wont break the existing plugins (one of which I believe is based on a request by you). However it's possible there may be something I am not aware of that's being done. As far as a time frame goes I can't say. But once we launch BetaZone you can feel pretty confident that any major changes will have already been fixed. But like my post above explains. It's still a beta. We've tried our best to get the plugin and theme areas to be really solid. But it's going to take people testing things to really make sure everything is working properly. And updating existing plugins if they do break really shouldn't be very difficult. I recommend keeping local copies of all of your plugin code.