New episode of CiviCRM (and seriously - 3.4.beta1 / 4.0.beta1 is ready for download)

Stable is getting close! This week, we bring you totally new thrill in CiviCRM Releases series (season 3.4/4.0) - the BETA1!

An remember - if you didn't already, make sure you read "Step up and help out" section of this blog post!

Versions released today are:

• 4.0.beta1 for Drupal 7 and Joomla 1.6
• 3.4.beta1 for Drupal 6 and Joomla 1.5

Please remember this is an BETA release and it should NOT be used on production sites - however, we enourage you to install it on your test sites and let us know about any bugs or problems. If you want to find out what's the beta/final release schedule - it is available on our wiki.

There are a few public sandboxes where you can try one (or many) of above versions:

• CiviCRM 4.0 on Drupal 7
• CiviCRM 4.0 on Joomla 1.6
• CiviCRM 3.4 on Drupal 6

Feel free to click around and let us know what you think.

Step up and help out!

The moment of releasing CiviCRM 3.4.beta1 and 4.0.beta1 is a great occasion to get involved in CiviCRM community. There are many ways you can help make this release better and bug free.

• Log in to the one of the sandboxes and try out your favourite features. If you find a problem, please report it on the appropriate forum board. Remember that sandbox data is periodically reset.
• Download the tarball and upgrade a copy of your site to 3.4 or 4.0 - let us know if you encounter any problems. This is an especially valuable contribution since we need to have the upgrade process tested on different sets of data. After you've done this, play around with your favourite features, with your local data. Problems appearing? Use the CiviCRM 3.4 and 4.0 release testing board on the forums to discuss problems and find answers!
• If you're a developer and have PHP skills, we strongly encourage you to develop and attach a code patch AND a unit test along with any bug you report through our issue tracker. Ping us on IRC if you need help figuring out how to do this.

What's new?

Quick list of the most prominent new features and improvements in this release:

• Comprehensive change logging reports for Contact data and Contributions
• Ability to REVERT changes to contact data
• Improvements to extensions mechanism (ability to download extensions automatically)
• A new improved api

and other features, sponsored through successful Make it Happen campaigns:

• Permissioning for Joomla! 1.6 (requires CiviCRM 4.0)
• Workflow (rules integration) for CiviMail (Drupal installs)
• Campaign Integration with other CiviCRM components
• Multi-Site and hierarchical groups support for CiviMail
• Add Prev/Next links to dedupe merge screen
• Membership “upsell” - allowing membership type to be changed on renewal while maintaining continuity
• Credit offline and existing contributions to a personal campaign page

More details on the new features are in the Whats new in CiviCRM v3.4 / v4.0? post

Downloads

You can download the release from SourceForge - select from the civicrm-latest section. The filenames include the 3.4beta1 and 4.0beta1 labels, e.g. civicrm-3.4.beta1-drupal.tar.gz or civicrm-4.0.beta1-joomla.tar.gz. Make sure you're downloading the correct version: for Drupal or Joomla. Again, remember that 4.0 works with Joomla 1.6/Drupal 7 and 3.4 works with Joomla 1.5/Drupal 6.

New Installations

If you are installing CiviCRM 3.4.beta1 from scratch, please use the corresponding automated installer instructions:

• Install CiviCRM 4.0 on Drupal 7
• Install CiviCRM 4.0 on Joomla 1.6
• Install CiviCRM 3.4 on Drupal 6
• Install CiviCRM 3.4 on Joomla 1.5

Upgrading to 3.4.beta1 or 4.0.beta1

The procedure for upgrading is described in following documents:

• Upgrade Drupal Sites to 3.4
• Upgrade Drupal Sites to 4.0
• Upgrade Joomla Sites to 3.4
• Upgrade Joomla Sites to 4.0

We will continue to include automated upgrades for subsequent alpha and beta releases of 3.4/4.0 - so you should be able to upgrade your test site easily over the course of the release cycle.