Whats new in Champion 2009.x

Champion 2009.4 is going to be officially released soon.

This version introduces some new features and fixes the bugs that were found in 2009.0. Before you begin reading the extended list of changes and additions, it is important to know the highlights of this release.

The most remarkable change is that Champion is now only compatible with PHP 5. PHP 4 is not supported any more. If you have PHP 4.x on your server either upgrade to PHP 5.x or use Champion 2009.0 or later.

Champion 2009.4 introduces Oracle as the third officially supported database type. Although Oracle support is experimental, it worked fine during our tests. Please report to us any problems you may find to make Oracle support better. Turning to PHP 5 and Oracle support, was required by Champion Consulting Team to perform numerous changes to the Champion source code.

Most of the work we have done on Champion 2009.4 is invisible... over 300 commits to our SVN, decades of files in each one, is the proof of hard work that has been done on the core level. What is visible and we think users will love, is the new integrated Blog (Champion blog) component.

Champion 2009.4 (Prometheus) changelog

1. You can set new users to be approved manually before they are able to login for the first time. After an administrator approve a new user registration, a notification e-mail, written in the user's preferable language, is sent to him to notify him that his registration was approved.

2. Integration of component Blog. The Blog (Champion Blog) is a full featured Blog component for Champion CMS. You can create unlimited user blogs and assign an owner to each one.

3. Users can post comments on Blog posts. Commentary support for third party components. On the next release user commentary will be supported for the normal content items too.

4. Updated TinyMCE to the latest version for better XHTML compatibility.

5. Updated ADOdb database library to the latest version.

6. Oracle database support (experimental)

7. PHP SEO upgrade. A totally new language handling system developed for PHP SEO enabled web sites. The language information is now stored permanently in the url. For each language Champion generates sub-folder like URLs (except from the default site language). Htaccess file was also updated.

8. Champion became PHP 5.x only compatible (recommended PHP 5.2 or greater).

9. Multi-lingual module titles for standard modules.

10. Multi-lingual menu items titles for standard menu items.

11. Option to generate RSS feeds for any content item regardless if it is published on front-page or not.

12. RTL improvements.

13. Updated language files.

14. Updated automatic translation feature.

15. Updated web site screen shot feature for component Weblinks.

16. Updated Champion installer.

17. Option to change the default username (currently was admin) during Champion installation.

18. Some improvements to the default template.

19. FTP improvements to work with open_basedir restriction enabled.

20. New error management function. Error messages are now more informational.

21. Support of XML schemas version 0.3

22. Updated security images (captcha) feature.

23. Option to auto-publish submitted content items from front-end based on access manager permissions.

24. Added database table #__comments

25. On database table #__banners the column "date" renamed to "dateadded"

26. Implementation of user uploaded files on their own directory (currently used on the Champion Blog)

27. Fixed menu link creation in component typed content

Many other small fixes, improvements and additions.