CourseForum and ProjectForum News and Tips

IMPORTANT: This Blog Has Moved!

2007-08-14T07:41:00.000-04:00

We've replaced this weblog with a new one, located at blog.courseforum.com. Apologies for moving the location, but this was needed because of a change in blogging software we felt was important to make. You'll find the new blog will have significantly more content than we've published here before as well. Please update your bookmarks and/or RSS feeds in your reader accordingly.

5.5 Beta 2.

2007-07-31T13:13:00.000-04:00

We've released a second beta of CourseForum and ProjectForum 5.5. Compared with the first beta, this one primarily addresses several small cosmetic issues, and tweaks some internal debugging.

Beta of Version 5.5.

2007-07-16T16:47:00.001-04:00

We've released a first beta of CourseForum and ProjectForum 5.5. You can find a detailed list of new additions, enhancements and bug fixes on that page. Please try this out and let us know how it works for you!

Patch Release 5.4.2.

2007-06-19T11:46:00.001-04:00

We've posted a second patch release for 5.4. This has several bug fixes in it, including a workaround for a problem that prevented running at all on certain newer Linux systems, especially under SELinux.

Patch Release 5.4.1.

2007-05-31T13:42:00.000-04:00

We've posted version 5.4.1 to our site; this is a patch release that corrects a problem where sometimes interrupted downloads would leave operating system files open, which in extreme cases could eventually prevent further files from being opened.

CourseForum/ProjectForum 5.4.

2007-04-23T10:46:00.000-04:00

Versions 5.4.0 of CourseForum and ProjectForum are now available for download. As always, visit the main CourseForum and ProjectForum pages for full details and downloads. Here are the changes.

Beta of 5.4.

2007-03-29T08:05:00.000-04:00

We've posted a public beta of CourseForum and ProjectForum version 5.4. Highlights include improvements and additions to various admin screens (list of pages, attachments, versions, etc.), as well as the usual range of smaller changes.

Patch Release 5.3.2.

2007-03-19T10:15:00.000-04:00

We've issued another patch release for CourseForum and ProjectForum, which simply cleans up some warning messages that were showing up in log files and the Javascript console. All of these are completely harmless; there are no functional changes in this release. So if you're already at 5.3.1, you shouldn't notice any real difference.

ProjectForum Basic Promo Ends Soon.

2007-03-02T14:25:00.000-05:00

Our special introductory pricing offer for ProjectForum Basic will continue only until the end of this month. You can find out more by visiting our sales page.

Patch Release 5.3.1.

2007-02-27T13:04:00.000-05:00

We've just issued a patch release of CourseForum and ProjectForum, now at version 5.3.1. This version fixes several "memory leaks", which are problems in the software that can lead to the program using more and more memory over time.

Because this increasing memory can sometimes lead to instability, we'd recommend upgrading to anyone who has had problems in the past where the software runs fine for a while, but weeks or months later mysteriously crashes.

For those who are interested, the leaks we fixed were in three places: one where the program frees up forums from memory that haven't been used for a while, a second in the versions pages where it figures out the differences between versions, and the last in a weird situation with search if the requester (usually a robot, not an actual web browser) sends a particular set of http headers in their request.

CourseForum and ProjectForum 5.3 Released

2007-02-05T07:07:00.000-05:00

We've posted the production versions of CF/PF 5.3.0 to our website for download, and these are also now running on our hosting servers. As always, visit the main CourseForum and ProjectForum pages for full details and downloads.

You can see a list of changes here.

Beta of 5.3 - Custom links and more.

2007-01-24T13:10:00.000-05:00

We've posted the first beta of CF/PF 5.3.

The beta page describes what's in the release, but at this stage I wanted to draw attention to the new custom links feature. For all the power users out there who've wanted to add new features to the markup, this new feature should give you everything you want. At this stage we'd definitely be interested in feedback to make sure people are able to do everything they want with it.

Great example of ProjectForum usage.

2006-12-16T15:36:00.000-05:00

Have a look at this wiki article on TechSoup. The second half describes a great project that our friends at w8nc have been doing with the Alzheimer's Society of Ontario, where they've replaced their static intranet with a ProjectForum site, with fantastic results.

Patch Release 5.2.2.

2006-11-29T14:23:00.000-05:00

We've just issued another patch release, which addresses problems with using preview within projects, and also adds images and document icons to the preview facility.

Logo problem in Broadcast-derived custom themes.

2006-11-28T11:06:00.000-05:00

If you're using a custom theme that is based on Broadcast, and have found after upgrading to 5.2 that the ProjectForum logo is now overlapping the breadcrumbs in the top left corner, rather than being in the top right corner as before, here is what is happening. All themes now load a common 'base.css' before the theme-specific styles.css, allowing many common things to be factored out of the theme, and then 'styles.css' can override the defaults only if needed. Because we're overriding, sometimes you need to specify things a bit differently. In this case, you'll want to change the '#footerlogo' section of your styles.css to read:

#footerlogo {
    left: auto;
    right: 10px;
}

Patch release 5.2.1.

2006-11-13T12:53:00.000-05:00

For those of you using Internet Explorer who may have been having trouble with getting the new 'preview' feature working on some pages, there is a new patch release (5.2.1) available that appears to correct this problem. Note that because of aggressive browser caching, you may need to empty your browser's cache (or force reload several times) once you've switched to the new version to make sure that you're actually using the latest changes.

Version 5.2 Released.

2006-11-06T11:04:00.000-05:00

Version 5.2 of both CourseForum and ProjectForum is now available for download from our website. This is the release featuring major changes to the editing page: edit preview, a format toolbar, resizable edit window, and a comprehensive help system. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback during the beta, whether identifying bugs, offering suggestions or simply sharing your enthusiasm for the changes. Here is the official press release.

Google acquires JotSpot.

2006-11-01T07:51:00.000-05:00

For those of you following the wiki world (and apparently for a whole lot of others), yesterday's announcement that Google has purchased wiki vendor JotSpot was quite a big deal. Our sincere congratulations to Joe and his team, who have built a great product that took wikis in an interesting direction. It's also of course further proof of how far wikis have come in the last few years, from obscure techno-geek tools to mainstream.

JotSpot is primarily a hosted service, though they had recently introduced a version that could be installed in-house; that has now been killed off. This unfortunately reduces even further the choices available for those who want to run a wiki in-house, and especially not have to fight with a lot of infrastructure, complicated open source software, or be forced into buying special hardware to do so.

With our ProjectForum software, we've commited from day one to delivering a commercial quality wiki experience to those who would prefer to keep their important data in-house, behind the firewall. That means amazingly quick and easy, dependency-free installation and setup has been there from the start; not so easy if we'd tried to port from a hosted version after the fact.

Running hosted is a good choice for a lot of people, but it's not for everyone. For those who want to run a wiki in house, ProjectForum is a great choice. With a range of licensing options, including a free version, and versions available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, you can get started today. Of course, we also have a hosted version too, useful if you'd like to keep your options open to migrate in house down the road.

For more info on ProjectForum, see www.projectforum.com, and also see why our customers have chosen ProjectForum.

Second beta of 5.2.

2006-10-24T12:34:00.000-04:00

We've posted a second beta of 5.2, which addresses a number of issues people have found - thanks to everyone who tried it out and reported back to us. Details of the changes plus the new downloads are on our beta page.

New Beta.

2006-10-02T15:03:00.000-04:00

The first beta for version 5.2 is now available. Definitely worth checking out, in particular for the new features on the editing page: preview, a new format toolbar, a new help system, more control of page layout, and more. See beta page for full details.

Patch Release 5.1.2

2006-09-13T06:40:00.000-04:00

We've put out another minor new release, which again contains a handful of bug fixes; details in the changes log. Available now for download.

Running with "launchd" (OS X).

2006-08-29T13:28:00.000-04:00

For OS X users, we've updated one of our HowTo's, which describes how to run CourseForum or ProjectForum under "launchd". Starting with OS X 10.4 Tiger, launchd is the preferred way to manage automatically run programs — starting the program when the machine first boots, restarting it if its ever stopped, and so on. The HowTo also describes the use of StartupItems, for pre-Tiger systems. See HOWTO: Running as an OS X StartupItem or via Launchd.

Proxying ProjectForum through IIS on Windows.

2006-08-16T12:04:00.000-04:00

For those of you who have been looking for an affordable and easy way to have IIS proxy ProjectForum for you (so that ProjectForum appears as one part of your existing IIS site), one of our customers has recommended a solution called ISAPI_Rewrite. While we haven't tried it ourselves, it does appear that you'd be able to set things up with only a line or two of configuration changes. We've updated our Proxying through a Webserver HOWTO with this information.

Patch Release 5.1.1.

2006-08-14T14:52:00.000-04:00

We've put out a minor new release, which contains a handful of bug fixes; details in the changes log. Available now for download.

New $49 ProjectForum Basic.

2006-07-31T09:51:00.000-04:00

After many requests, we've added a new licensing option for ProjectForum: ProjectForum Basic. From the release...

ProjectForum Basic introduces a new option that fits between the existing Free and Standard versions of the software. The most popular feature requests from users of the Free version have been bundled together into one affordable package. The added features are: file and image attachments, page locking, and theme selection.

ProjectForum Basic is available now at an introductory price of US$49. Downloads are available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unixes, while users of the software need only a standard web browser.