Announcing CiviCRM 2.0 Beta

We are excited to announce that our 2.0 Beta release is now available for download, AND to try out on our demo site. You can find Release Highlights here, and check out the resolved issues listing for details on the 330+ improvements and bug fixes.

2.0 has significant code and schema changes to improve performance and scalability. The upgrade process is now a multi-step web-based process. We would like to encourage folks to download and test the beta release and help improve the final product. You can contribute significantly to the project by testing the upgrade process against a copy of your 1.9 data, as well as running your regular tasks on an upgraded site.

 

Check Out these New Features

• 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.
• 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. Check out the custom Find Contributors by Aggregate Totals search on the demo site for an example of what you can do.

Download

You can download CiviCRM 2.0 Beta at our download page. Select from the civicrm-latest section. The filenames include the 2.0 Beta label: civicrm-2.0.beta…. 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 Beta 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

Reporting Issues and Bugs

We look forward to getting your feedback on the release in the coming days. If you have questions installing, upgrading and / or using 2.0 feature - or you're seeing a problem and you're not sure if it's a bug - please post your issue to the 2.0 release testing section of the community forums. 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.