
The XOOPS Development Team is pleased to announce the release of XOOPS 2.3.3b Final 

This release includes many bugfixes and user experience improvements, done by XOOPS Core Development Team and XOOPS community, plus a Security Patch from August 20, 2009.

Some of the areas:
- profile and pm modules improved by dhcst
- installer improved by dugris and marco, etc.
- theme improved by mamba, aph3x, kris and burning
- tinymce editor improved by dugris and luciorota
- snoopy class upgraded by julionc
- smarty upgraded by dhcst
- bug tracker managed by marco

The Security Patch includes new versions of PM and Protector


Download from [url=https://sourceforge.net/projects/xoops/files/XOOPS%20Core%20%28stable%20releases%29/XOOPS%202.3.3b/]Sourceforge repository[/url].


System requirements
-----------------------------------

PHP:
Any PHP version >= 4.3 (PHP 4.2.x may work but is not officially supported, PHP 5.0+ is strongly recommended)

MySQL:
MySQL server 3.23+ (MySQL 5.0+ is strongly recommended)

Web server:
Any server supporting the required PHP version (Apache highly recommended)


Downloading XOOPS
-----------------------------------

Your can get this release package from the sourceforge.net file repository.
Both .zip and .gz archives are provided.


Installing XOOPS
-----------------------------------

   1. Copy the content of the htdocs/ folder where it can be accessed by your server
   2. Ensure mainfile.php and uploads/ are writable by the web server
   3. For security considerations, you are encouraged to move directories "/xoops_lib" (for XOOPS libraries) and "/xoops_data" (for XOOPS data) out of document root, or even change the folder names.
   4. Make the directory xoops_data/ writable; Create (if not already present) and make the directories xoops_data/caches/, xoops_data/caches/xoops_cache/, xoops_data/caches/smarty_cache/ and xoops_data/caches/smarty_compile/ writable.
   5. Access the folder where you installed the htdocs/ files using your web browser to launch the installation wizard

Installing Protector in XOOPS
-----------------------------------
We also highly recommend the installation of the PROTECTOR module which will bring additional security protection and logging capabilities to your site:
To install protector module with a fresh new installation of XOOPS, delete the mainfile.dist.php available at the xoops root, copy /extras/mainfile.dist.php.protector to /htdocs/mainfile.dist.php and rename it to mainfile.dist.php BEFORE installing XOOPS.
To install protector module with upgrading from a previous version to XOOPS 2.3.1, delete the mainfile.dist.php available at the xoops root, copy /extras/mainfile.dist.php.protector to /upgrade/upd-2.0.18-to-2.3.0/mainfile.dist.php and rename it to mainfile.dist.php BEFORE upgrading XOOPS.


Upgrading from a previous version
-----------------------------------

Upgrading from XOOPS 2.3.1 or 2.3.2 (easy way)
   1. Get the right update package from the sourceforge file repository
   2. Overwrite your existing files with the new ones
   3. Move the "upgrade" folder inside the "htdocs" folder (it's been kept out as it's not needed for full installs) on your local machine
   4. Access <your.site.url>/upgrade/ with a browser, and follow the instructions
   5. Follow the instructions to update your database
   6. Delete the upgrade folder from your server
   7. Update the "system" module from the modules administration interface, other modules, especially "profile" are recommended to update as well


Upgrading from XOOPS 2.0.* above 2.0.14 and 2.2.* (using the full package)
   0. Unpack the archive to your LOCAL machine (e.g. PC) in a temporary directory.
   1. Move the "upgrade" folder inside the "htdocs" folder (it's been kept out as it's not needed for full installs) on your local PC
   2. Delete htdocs/mainfile.php, htdocs/install/, htdocs/cache/, htdocs/extras/, htdocs/template_c/, htdocs/themes/ and htdocs/uploads/ from the "htdocs" folder on your LOCAL machine
   3. Upload the content of the htdocs folder on your LOCAL machine over your existing files on your server
   4. For security considerations, you are encouraged to move directories xoops_lib (for XOOPS libraries) and xoops_data (for XOOPS data) out of document root, or even change the folder names.
   5. Make the directory of xoops_data/ writable; Create and make the directories of xoops_data/caches/, xoops_data/caches/xoops_cache/, xoops_data/caches/smarty_cache/ and xoops_data/caches/smarty_compile/ writable.
   6. Ensure the server can write to mainfile.php
   7. Access <your.site.url>/upgrade/ with a browser, and follow the instructions
   8. Follow the instructions to update your database
   9. Write-protect mainfile.php again
  10. Delete the upgrade folder from your server
  11. Update the "system" module from the modules administration interface, other modules are recommended to update as well


Upgrading from any XOOPS ranging from 2.0.7 to 2.0.13.2 (using the full package):
   0. Unpack the archive to your LOCAL machine (e.g. PC) in a temporary directory.
   1. Move the "upgrade" folder inside the "htdocs" folder (it's been kept out as it's not needed for full installs) on your LOCAL machine
   2. Delete htdocs/mainfile.php, htdocs/install/, htdocs/cache/, htdocs/extras/, htdocs/template_c/, htdocs/themes/ and htdocs/uploads/ from the "htdocs" folder on your LOCAL machine
   3. Upload the content of the htdocs folder on your LOCAL machine over your existing files on your server
   4. Delete the following folders and files from your server (they belong to an old version):
          * class/smarty/core
          * class/smarty/plugins/resource.db.php
   5. Ensure the server can write to mainfile.php
   6. For security considerations, you are encouraged to move directories xoops_lib (for XOOPS libraries) and xoops_data (for XOOPS data) out of document root, or even change the folder names.
   7. Make the directory of xoops_data/ writable; Create and make the directories of xoops_data/caches/, xoops_data/caches/xoops_cache/, xoops_data/caches/smarty_cache/ and xoops_data/caches/smarty_compile/ writable.
   8. Access <your.site.url>/upgrade/ with a browser, and follow the instructions
   9. Write-protect mainfile.php again
  10. Delete the upgrade folder from your server
  11. Update the "system" module from the modules administration interface, other modules are recommended to update as well


Upgrading a non UTF-8 site:
UTF-8 encoding has been introduced into XOOPS 2.3 as default charset. However, there might be some problems with converting existent websites from non UTF-8 charset to UTF-8.
Before there is a good enough solution for this conversion, following settings are recommended when you upgrade an existent website if you are not an experienced user:
 - Select "Do not change" option in "Database character set and collation" step during upgrade process
 - Modify /languages/yourlanguage/global.php to use existent _CHARSET value if it has been changed to UTF-8 in your new global.php file as [code]define('_CHARSET', 'UTF-8');[/code]


Upgrading XoopsEditor package:
In the XOOPS package, there are five editors included: dhtmltextarea and textarea for plain text, fckeditor, tinymce and koivi for WYSIWYG HTML.
Since there are some directory structure changes in both fckeditor and tinymce editors, you are recommended to remove existent editors before uploading the new additors.
And if you are using fckeditor for modules, please modify module specific configs following the files in /fckeditor/modules/, especially if you use "article" module.


Debug information display level
-----------------------------------

Since XOOPS 2.3.1 debug information display level is enabled as a temporary solution for 2.3* to show debug information to different level of users: to all users, to members or to admins only.
The configuration can be set in /xoops_data/configs/xoopsconfig.php
A new debug information renderer is redesigned in XOOPS 3.0



Files integrity check
-----------------------------------

The full XOOPS package is released with a script able to check if all the system files have been correctly uploaded to the server. To use it, follow these instructions:

   1. Upload the checksum.php and checksum.md5 files located in the XOOPS package root to your XOOPS server folder (putting them next to mainfile.php).
   2. Execute checksum.php with your browser
   3. If necessary, re-upload the missing or corrupted system files
   4. Remove checksum.php and checksum.md5 from your server


Modules
-----------------------------------

This release contains only the "system-related modules". You are invited to browse the XOOPS modules repository to if you need additional functionality. Note: as a new repository is being built, the current repository is not up-to-date, PLEASE VISIT INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPERS' WEBSITES TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE USING LATEST VERSION OF MODULES.


How to contribute
-----------------------------------
Bug report: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=41586&atid=430840
Patch and enhancement: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=41586&atid=430842
Feature design: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=41586&atid=430843
Release announcement: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xoops-announcement


XOOPS Development Team
August 20th, 2009