We are preparing the first public preview of IP.Board 3.0.0 alpha and look forward to everyone's feedback and help in testing. It is our current plan to preview IP.Board 3.0.0 alpha the second half of next week (around Nov 10 2008 +/- a day or two). As promised, those in the customer group on the IPS forums will receive the preview a bit earlier. Keep an eye on our company blog for updates.
The public preview will be on a special web site and will not be available for download. You can use the same login as the IPS company forums to login.
A few important notes...
This will be a preview of alpha software. We are not quite to the beta stage so please keep in mind that there are some areas still being finished up. We believe all functionality should be working properly but there are parts of the software that need some skin work. Some of the newest areas, like the new PM system, could use some extensive testing.
We ask that you help us test the functionality, click around the preview copy and report those issues that you find in the special area of our Bug Tracker for the IP.Board 3.0.0 alpha preview (will be available on preview day). When reporting please be careful to look over all already reported bugs to be sure not to submit duplicates. Do your best to try to break it... so we can then fix it.
As we have reviewed in previous blog entries, IP.Board 3.0.0 is very different from the version 1.x or 2.x series. So far the feedback from our private testing group has been great and everyone loves the new look and feel. We can never please everyone :) so please be civil if you do not like something that is purely a matter of opinion and offer a constructive suggestion we can consider if you feel something can be improved.
IP.Board 3.0.0 is feature-frozen at this point. We will not be adding any new features but are happy to consider enhancements to those already included. We will always have version 3.1 for feature additions and one of the best parts of 3.0's architecture is adding new features along with upgrading is much easier than the 2.x series so upgrades can be developed and released much faster.
Upcoming Beta Releases
We will use the public preview for our first round of testing and performance evaluation. Depending on how the public preview goes we will begin releasing downloadable betas. Expect updates on the beta release schedule in the week following the public preview.
Components like Blog, Gallery, and Downloads will have their own testing phase so please keep and eye out for those.
Thank you for your interest and everyone at IPS is looking forward to the public preview. We hope you are too and that you enjoy it!