4.0.alpha2 and 3.4.alpha2 released

Here's another double release, fresh and ready, being a perfect opportunity for you to contribute to your favourite Open Source project (How? See "Step up and help out" section of this post):

• 4.0.alpha2 for Drupal 7 and Joomla 1.6
• 3.4.alpha2 for Drupal 6 and Joomla 1.5

Please remember this is an ALPHA 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. The beta/final release schedule is 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.alpha2 and 4.0.alpha2 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 3.4alpha2 and 4.0alpha2 labels, e.g. civicrm-3.4.alpha2-drupal.tar.gz or civicrm-4.0.alpha2-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.alpha2 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.alpha2 or 4.0.alpha2

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 releases of 3.4 - so you should be able to upgrade your test site easily over the course of the release cycle.