SMF 2.1 RC1 released

[Sesquipedalian]

Simple Machines is pleased to announce the release of SMF 2.1 RC1. This first Release Candidate for SMF 2.1 brings the beta development phase to an end and is one of last steps toward the official release of SMF 2.1. Numerous bugs that were reported after the release of Beta 3 have been fixed and improvements have been made to security, stability, and performance. Notable improvements since Beta 3 include:

• Many database query improvements and optimizations.
• Updates to SCEditor, jQuery, and several other plugins and libraries.
• Image proxy improvements and support for external image proxies.
• Faster and more robust BBCode parsing.
• Full support for IRIs (International URLs).
• Localization support for reCaptcha.
• The ability for time zone descriptions to be localized.
• Rewrites of various language strings to make them clearer.
• An overhaul of the built-in language editor.
• More flexibility and options for custom profile fields.
• Improvments to two-factor authentication.
• An enhanced error log, including backtrace information.
• Bug fixes for alerts and email notifications.
• Support for decimal values in paid subscriptions.
• Smiley sets can now use many different image file formats.
• A multitude of template and CSS improvements and fixes.
• More intelligent CSS and JavaScript minimization.
• Even more new integration hooks to support edit-free modding.

You can read about these and many other improvements in the list of changes on GitHub.

The term "Release Candidate" means that the developers believe this version of the software is reliable enough to be installed and used on production websites. Nevertheless, you should still expect to encounter minor bugs in SMF 2.1 RC1. We encourage you to report any bugs you find.

You can install SMF 2.1 RC1 as a brand new forum, or upgrade to it from SMF 2.0.15 or any prior version. You can obtain an install or upgrade package from the download page. You can look at Installing and Upgrading SMF in the Online Manual to learn more. Please note that upgrading from any beta version to RC1 is not supported.

Modification and theme authors are encouraged to check the roadmap for our upcoming development milestones when deciding how to update their modifications and themes for SMF 2.1. In general, most mod authors should be able to start their work now, while theme authors may wish to wait for RC2.

Finally, as always, this announcement topic is not for support. Discussion and support for SMF 2.1 can be found in the SMF 2.1 support board.

Special thanks are due to all of the team members and code contributors whose fantastic work has made this possible. We greatly appreciate the time, energy, and contributions that they have given to the SMF project.

Thank you for using SMF!

Kind regards,
Simple Machines



Update:

A significant bug has been found in RC1 that prevents alerts and notification messages from being sent. A fix for this has already been included in the code on GitHub and will be available in RC2.

In the meantime, users can fix this issue themselves by following these instructions.

[Looking]

Great news. Glad to see it pressing forward towards a final.

[vbgamer45]

Congrats on the released! A lot of work has been done to get to this point.

[SleePy]

Thanks to all those who helped make this release possible!

[LiroyvH]

Good job everyone and a big thank you to all developers, contributors and testers!
Congratulations!

[Nibogo]

Amazing work! Thanks for your efforts

[Ronald_1938]

Thanks to all the folks, that volunteer their time to bring this release to us..

[HDB]

Congratulations to all you smart guys and gals that make my forum look good!

[-Rock Lee-]

Congratulations it's great to see RC1 released, Thanks to all the team!!!

[Bigguy]

It's great to finally see this out. Thanks to all the Devs and all involved for their hard work.

[jaideejung007]

Congratulations!!!

I have been waiting for 4 years.

[Colin]

Fantastic work all!

[albertlast]

Please had in mind that the supported version of php/mariadb/mysql/postgres changed,
between the beta 3 and rc1.

Min
Php 5.4 or higher.
MySQL 5.0.22/5.1.10 or higher.
MariaDB 5.1.10 or higher.
PostgreSQL 9.4 or higher.

In mysql some query optimization only works with 8.0+ and mariadb 10.2+
On pg side to run all queries in best way you need 9.5+

Best performance you get when you used the newest version of this apps.

at the point of posting php 7.3 got already tested (not fully) but issues are not found.

[shadow82x]

Awesome work, it's been a long time coming.

Now it's time to update the website here.

[RML]

Congratulations and many thanks to all who worked hard on this project.

[d3vcho]

It's finally here! Well done everybody

[iMiKK]

Great news!
Thanks for everyone who has been associated with this project.

[Rob Lightbody]

Well done and thank you.

Looking forward to trying it.

[lurkalot]

What a pleasant surprise, great work everyone. Thank you. 

[Arantor]

Congratulations!