The team is excited to announce the fourth alpha release for 4.2 with support for Drupal 7, Joomla 1.7 and WordPress.
Please remember this is an ALPHA release and it should NOT be used on production sites - however, we strongly encourage everyone to upgrade a copy of your current site(s) on a test server and let us know about any bugs or problems.
You can also test drive the release on each platform using the public sandboxes:
Please spend some time running through your critical workflows on these sandboxes, and report any bugs or issues on the release testing forum board.
What's new?
Here's a quick list of some of the cool new features and improvements in this release:
- Inline (quick) editing of contact fields (email, phone, communications preferences, custom fields) from Contact Summary - CRM-9908
- Allow a person to register for multiple events simultaneously. - CRM-8705
- Recurring contributions and auto-renew memberships: allow self-service and back-office update and cancellation - CRM-10076
- Offer donors a choice of payment processors on your online contribution pages - CRM-9850
- Support for SMS blasts and interactions - CRM-9782
- Relative date filters on all search forms (e.g. "last month", "this year-to-date") - CRM-9427
- Improve search filters for mailings and link to advanced search from mailing summaries - CRM-9542
- Batch (automated) dedupe and merge - CRM-9312
- Create and send thank-you letters from contribution search - CRM-9998
- Multiple membership renewal reminders - CRM-8359
- Batch entry of contributions and membership payments (quick input of batches of checks). Read more here- CRM-9834
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Replace hard-code email address in online event registration forms with a reserved profile, and allow online event registration forms to NOT collect email addresses - CRM-9587
Want to learn more? Check out the complete list of new and improved functionality on the issue tracker.
Step up and help out!
The moment of releasing CiviCRM 4.2.alpha4 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 the features you or your clients use regularly. If you find a problem, first check the open issues list on the issue tracker to see if it's already been reported. If not, please report it on the appropriate forum board. Remember that sandbox data is periodically reset.
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Download the tarball and upgrade a copy of your site to 4.2 - 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 favorite features, with your local data. Problems appearing? Use the CiviCRM 4.2 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.
Downloads
You can download the release from SourceForge - select from the civicrm-latest section. The filenames include the 4.2.alpha4 labels, e.g. civicrm-4.2.alpha4-drupal.tar.gz or civicrm-4.2.alpha4-joomla.tar.gz or civicrm-4.2.alpha4-wordpress.tar.gz. Make sure you're downloading the correct version: for Drupal or Joomla or Wordpress.
New Installations
If you are installing CiviCRM 4.2.alpha4 from scratch, please use the corresponding automated installer instructions:
Upgrading to 4.2.alpha4
The procedure for upgrading is described in following documents:
- Upgrade Drupal 7 / CiviCRM 4.0 Sites to 4.2
- Upgrade Joomla Sites to 4.2
- Upgrade WordPress Sites to 4.2
We will continue to include automated upgrades for subsequent alpha releases of 4.2 - so you should be able to upgrade your test site easily over the course of the release cycle.
Contributors
Community support and engagement is the force that sustains and drives CiviCRM forward. This release would not have been possible without the incredible contributions of these people and organizations:
Adam Wight, Allen Shaw, Andres Spagarino, Andrew Harris, Andrew Hunt, Andrew Walker, Alice Aguilar, Andre Gurgel, Bob Vincent, Brian Shaugnessy, Chris Burgess, Coleman Watts, Dave D, Dave Moreton, Eileen McNaughton, Erik Brower, Erik Hommel, Frank Gomez, Grayin Kim, Henry Bennett, Jamie McClelland, Jason Bertolacci, Jeroen Bensch, Jim Meehan, Jon Goldberg, Jonathan Mark, Joe Murray, Ken West, Ken Zalewski, Marianela Zucotti Bozzano, Mathieu Lutfy, Matt Chapman, Matt Niemayer, Micah Lee, Michael Labriola, Michael McAndrew, Nicolas Ganivet, Noah Miller, Parvez Saleh, Peter McAndrew, Samuel Vanhove, Stephane Lussier, Steve Colson, Stuart Gaston, Tim Otten, Tom Kirkpatrick, Torrance Hodgeson, Xavier Dutoit.
AGH Strategies, Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, Association for Learning Technology, Backoffice Thinking, Circle Interactive, CiviDesk, Community Builders, DC Roadrunners, EE-atWork, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Software Foundation, Fuzion (NZ), Giant Rabbit, Gingko Street Labs, Kindling Trust, Koumbit, Korlon, International Mountain Biking Association, JMA Consulting, Lighthouse Consulting and Design, National Democratic Institute, New York State Senate, Ninjitsu Web Development, Nonprofit Solutions, NS Web Solutions, Palentetech, Progressive Technology Project, River Pool at Beacon, San Francisco Baykeeper, Switchback, Tech to the People, The Monthly, Third Sector Design, Veda Consulting, Voluntary Action Westminster, Woolman Sierra Friends Center, Woven, Zing.
