Announcing CiviCRM 1.8 (Stable)

We are excited to announce that our 1.8 release is now available for download, as well as testing on our demo site. We would like to thank our dedicated users for installing and testing the beta releases. This release features finding and merging duplicate contacts (de-duping, based on David Strauss’s algorithm), event price sets, employer fields in profiles, improved admin control panel, RSS feeds for events, the ability to define multiple payment processors, an automated Drupal installer and more; the CiviCRM 1.8 Roadmap describes all of the new features, while the resolved issues list sports the implementation details and lists fixed bugs. Many of the additions and changes in 1.8 were heavily driven by your feedback and requests, and we hope they solve many more of your CRM requirements. Download You can download CiviCRM 1.8 at our download page. The filenames include the 1.8 label: civicrm-1.8…. Be sure and select the correct version for your CMS (Drupal or Joomla) and for the version of PHP running on your server (PHP 4 or PHP 5). New Installations If you are installing CiviCRM 1.8 from scratch, you can use the manual installation instructions linked below:

• Drupal Installation
• Joomla Installation

Upgrading from 1.7 If you are upgrading an existing 1.7 site (working with a copy of the site, of course), we have provided a database upgrade script. Instructions for upgrading are here:

• Drupal Upgrade
• Joomla Upgrade

Reporting Issues and Bugs We look forward to getting your feedback on the release in the coming days. Bugs should be reported via our issue tracking system. 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. Demo We’ve setup a demo site (both with Drupal and Joomla) with the current CiviCRM 1.8 codebase. Feel free to click around and explore all of the new features.