Yes that's right, the latest version of DotNetNuke has made the leap to 3.3 and 4.3!

It looks like the core team have spent a lot of time on this release with lots of new features.

You can read the full announcement of the release in the DNN forum

Here you can download the latest versions of DotNetNuke

The new features include:

Membership, Roles, Profile Providers – Based on a variety of serious limitations in the default Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Providers, DotNetNuke® has been enhanced with an evolutionary set of equivalent abstract APIs and concrete implementations which provide greater extensibility, a richer feature set, and simpler administration.

Extensible Profile Management – Consolidating a wide range of community enhancement requests, the Profile service has been completely overhauled. Run-time extensibility enables site administrators to create and manage profile properties through a highly intuitive user interface. Profile properties are fortified with a broad range of attributes to help facilitate advanced business processes. Profile information is stored in a database format which allows for simple accessibility, searching, and extraction. Developers have the ability to create custom property editor controls as well as profile items which are specific to their modules.

Secure Folders – Building on the existing document management capabilities, a number of new storage options have been introduced at the folder level. Administrators can now create secure folders which can be locked down by role to prevent unauthorized access. In addition, folders can be designated for database storage if you wish to utilize the database rather than the file system for storage of specific documents.

Usability – Minor improvements to the content management capabilities have the potential for major productivity gains. Enhancements include AJAX-style “in-line” content editing, custom page templates, an improved interface for copying existing pages, and the ability to use the URL selection control from within the rich text editor.

Performance – Module settings are now cached to significantly reduce the number of database hits, caching logic was optimized throughout the application to eliminate threading issues, and a variety of modules were enhanced with improved module output caching techniques.

A full list of the features can be read in the Venexus blog

In the DotNetNuke forums, it was pointed out by leopold,

"Please notice, that there is a new download type "Upgrade". It still contains release.config, you need to use as a basis for your web.config (keeping your db connection string and object qualifier, as well as encryption keys), but it does not contain module upgrades, you will need to download and install new versions of modules separately from the projects' download page.

Please notice as well, that source version of DotNetNuke 3.3.0 and 4.3.0 does not include source versions of modules. You will need to download and install source code versions of modules separately from the projects' download page."

Charles Nurse has also blogged about a New Module Upgrade Wizard (.NET2) to be made available.

I will provide further information on the latest release after I have tested in my localhost installation test areas.

I would recommend that you do the same before upgrading the latest release to a critcial live website. Usually initial bugs are found in the latest release which are quickly fixed, so it's worth taking your time before applying the upgrade...

Happy DotNetNuking!

A note from Cathal in the DNN forum:

this is a release candidate - not the actual release. It's intended to give the community a preview, and not act as a gold release i.e. don't use it on production sites. When we move to release status, you can expect the project sources.

To further emphasise, this is a beta release. - From reading in the main DNN forum, many users have installed this over their current DotNetNuke installations on live production servers and then discovered a whole host of problems.

Do not install this version of DotNetNuke in a production environment.

I would only recommend to have a play with the new features in a localhost installation until the stable official version is released.

Thanks,

v4.3.1 and v3.3.1 have just been released.  - Again these are release candidate versions, so I would still not install these versions in a production environment.

 

Hi Lee

When the alpha version is reliased would you recommend an upgrade from 3.2 to 3.3 or a jump up to 4.3?

What is the major difference between the two versions, apart from finding 3rd party modules to suit? 

Thanks

Lynn

Hi Lynn,

Good question. - This is what I personally do for mission critical sites regarding upgrades. - I wait until several point releases have been released.

For instance on the new versions I will upgrade once the main DNN forum calms down and you can see that the majority of bugs have disappeared. - I will probably upgrade when it releases v4.3.3 or 3.3.3 on a mission critical site.

On other sites I will prob upgrade at 4.3.1 or 4.3.2 (4.3.1 has already been released, so probably 4.3.2 in this case).

Basically I install the latest version to my localhost instalation and perhaps any quiet sites to learn the features of the new version and then once it has fully stabalized I only then attempt an upgrade on a busy site.

In terms of what to upgrade to:

There are no differences functionality wise between the 2. - The difference is v3.x runs on ASP.NET1.1 and V4.x runs on ASP.NET 2.0.

I've noticed some module developers are now stopping support of V3.x so there maybe a reason for upgrading to 4.x.

Again personally on a mission critical site I won't take the risk until I have tested, tested, tested with various modules to see how well they upgrade etc.

You need to see if your modules will upgrade and work in DNN4.x that is the main thing you need to test.

I guess the question is - do you need to upgrade?

I have some sites in DNN2.x, DNN3.1 etc. if the site works, is relatively small traffic and all I do with it is update the content, I don't actually need to upgrade. - I don't need to go through the hassle of testing all of the modules etc. to see if they work with the latest version etc. etc.

However, if the site is a busy site where you are constantly adding new features etc. then it can be important to update it so that you are still compatible with any future modules.

- So there isn't a set answer, just a list of questions to ask yourself really!

Thanks,