After more than 6 months of design, development and QA - the team is thrilled to announce the release of CiviCRM 2.0 Stable. You can download the release AND / OR try it out on our demo sites.

2.0 features significant code and schema changes to improve performance and scalability - as well as a number of exciting new features. You can find Release Highlights here, and check out the resolved issues listing for details on the 450+ improvements and bug fixes.

A big round of applause is due to all the folks who downloaded, tested and submitted bug reports during the 2.0 release cycle. The alpha and beta packages were downloaded more than 3,200 times - and our new ping-back mechanism reported 450+ unique installations. 100+ bugs were reported by community members and fixed by the team during the release cycle. This is a huge increase and improvement in community participation in bullet-proofing a release - and should help make this a high quality release. However, given the complexity of the architecture and schema changes - we do anticipate that a few more issues will arise during the coming weeks. We plan on doing periodic bug fix releases every few weeks as needed.

2.0 Release Highlights

• CiviContribute Widgets - Allow you and your supporters to easily promote this fund-raising campaign. Widget code can be added to any web page - and provides a real-time display of current contribution results along with a direct link to the contribution form.
• Tell A Friend - Makes it easy for contributors and event participants to spread the word to their network by passing along their personal comments and links to your campaign pages. Friends are automatically added to your database and "recruiting" activities are credited to the senders.
• Pay Later / Pay by Cheque - Now you can provide a pay later alternative for online contributions, online membership signup/renewal and online event registration. These transactions are assigned a Pending status, and a new batch workflow has been created for you to easily record the completed payments when they come in.
• Custom Data Scalability - The method for storing custom data has been redesigned. These changes are designed to remove prior limitations on the number of custom data fields that could be handled by various operations. We believe they will also provide significant improvements in query performance.
• Custom Searches - Developers and accidental techies with a bit of PHP and SQL knowledge can create new search forms to handle specific search and reporting needs. Login to the Drupal demo, and check out the Find Contributors by Aggregate Totals custom search page for an example of what you can do.
• Standalone version with OpenID support - Now you can install CiviCRM independent of a CMS. Users can login with their OpenID.

Download

You can download CiviCRM 2.0 at our download page. Select from the civicrm-stable section. The filenames include the 2.0 label: civicrm-2.0.0…. Be sure and download the correct version for your CMS (Drupal or Joomla). As announced previously, 2.0 and all subsequent versions of CiviCRM require PHP 5. PHP 4 is no longer supported.
 

New 2.0 Installations

If you are installing CiviCRM 2.0 from scratch, use the installation instructions linked below:

• Drupal Installation
• Joomla Installation

Upgrading from 1.9 to 2.0

If you are upgrading an existing 1.9 site (working with a copy of the site, of course), we have provided a browser-based database upgrade script. Instructions for upgrading are here:

• Drupal Upgrade
• Joomla Upgrade

Upgrading 2.0 Beta to 2.0 Stable

• Drupal Installations - Untar the 2.0 stable distribution over your existing civicrm directory tree. Then reset your user session and cleanup the template cache as described in step 10 of the Drupal Upgrade procedure.
• Joomla Installations - Follow the Upgrade Instructions - skipping the DATABASE REBUILD AND UPGRADE steps (skip step 2 and 9).

NOTE: If you are running 2.0 Beta 1 or 2 - there is a minor database schema change which you should implement using the SQL statements described here. Otherwise, no database modifications are required when switching to 2.0 stable.
 

Reporting Issues and Bugs

We look forward to getting your feedback on the release in the coming days. If you have questions about installing, upgrading and / or using 2.0 features - or you're seeing a problem and you're not sure if it's a bug - please post your issue to the applicable section of the Community Forum. Include as many specifics as possible about the issue or question.

Bugs should be reported via our issue tracking system. Please select 2.0 in the ‘Affects Version’ dropdown. You will need to register as a user – this ensures that we can follow-up with you on your bug reports if necessary. Please ensure that the bug you’ve found is not reported already by checking the open issues listing.