Web Wiz Forums version 8.0 RC1 released - Event Date: 21 March 2006

Web Wiz Forums Release Candidate 1 has now been released. After months of beta testing you can now download and test-drive the new features in the next generation of Web Wiz Forums.

The next generation of Web Wiz Forums adds many new and improved features to this award winning Bulletin Board System.

The new Forum Engine has been built with performance and security in mind giving a high performing, low resources, secure system that can handle massive on-line communities.

Other new features include:-

• Improved performance with a new forum engine, most pages now process in under 0.05 seconds even on large forums
• Unlimited forums and sub forums
• New Calendar System
• Web Wiz Rich Text Editor Version 3 integration
• Web Wiz CAPTCHA 2.01 integration to prevent dictionary hacking and remote form submission
• New XML RSS Feeds (Really Simple Syndications) across the entire forum
• RSS online web browser reader tool using XLST
• Mederated Forums with post screening (Posts can be checked before being displayed in a public forum)
• Improved message filtering for malicious code using 'HTML Secure' Technology
• New proritory session tracking system with better security than the standard ASP session system and higher pefromance
• Support for load balanced web servers and IIS 6 Web Gardens
• Complete control of look and feel through one CSS file
• Improved poll's with poll editing and better protection from repeat voting
• International ISO Date Format for internal forum engine for improved server and locale compatibility
• Improved, more powerful, better performing, forum search engine
• Database support for MS SQL Server, MS Access, and now mySQL
• Active user’s page now also shows location of users
• Improved member profile page, now also has Skype support
• Improved support for Right to Left languages
• File sizes reduced to improved loading and browser rendering speed
• All HTML cleaned up and is now XHTML Transitional
• Topic and post orders can now be reversed
• Multiple page links improved and displayed top and bottom of pages
• Support for Topic Icons
• Support for STMP server authentication
• Improved image and file uploading, with files being removed when related posts are deleted
• Improved email activation system
• New, simpler to use, Group and Member permission system
• Progress bar now displayed when submitting many forms
• New error handling with descriptive error message to help track down errors and setup problems
• Simpler to setup SQL server and mySQL databases
• Simpler to move Access database to secure folder, with security alert message for those who don't
• Global server time/date off-set as well as member time/date off-set for changing date and time locale and format
• Improved end user error message displaying
• Simpler to login with more places to login
• Improved forum statistics displayed at the bottom of the forum index page
• New quick reply form to speed up page load times and cut bandwidth
• Improved Active Topics page to increase performance and improve server/locale compatibility
• Improved security with improved permissions checking, including in forum search engine
• Improved BB Forum codes
• Better formatting of Post Quote and Code blocks
• Improved support for Mozilla and Firefox browsers, including spell checker
• Improved performance for Private Message notification
• New Improved Admin Control Panel (Replaces former Admin Area)
• New Admin/Moderator Member Notes
• New support form Web Gardens and Multiple Load Balanced Web Servers (MySQL and SQL Server versions)
• New support for multiple installations on the same site
• New Member Approval by Forum Admin
• New ‘Today’s Birthdays’ displayed on Forum Index Page
• Performance Tuning of Database and SQL
• + Many more features

Cleck here for more info and download

If you have any issue or bugs to report, please start a new topic with as much detail as possible.


Edited by -boRg- - 24 March 2006 at 12:25pm

This version can be used on live sites as no more database changes are going to happen before the final release.

It is also considered stable enough for production servers, but as a Release Candidate version it may contain some minor bugs.

From larger forums that have already upgraded this morning the performance gain has even surprised me.

I have now released official database update tools for Access and SQL Server 7.x to 8.x databases.

These tools are still in beta testing, but feedback so far is good, but use them at your own risk:-

Database Upgrade Tools 7.x to 8x

I'm also going from Access 7 to MySQL.
I have found the following tool:
http://www.data-conversions.net/access-to-mysql-pro-converter.html
It has the ability to save to a MySQL dump file for importing through PhpMyadmin, since usually you don't have direct access to the MySQL database. I'm going to try the tool to go from Access 7 to Access 8 and then try this tool to go to MySQL.