Symphony.

Version 2.0.1 is out and available either via the Symphony site (http://symphony21.com/download/2.0.1/), or via Git. Please see below for a rather lengthy list of changes. Thanks to all that contributed.

Edit: Apologies, but the first archive (symphony-2.0.1.zip) that was available, via the Symphony site, did not include the README and LICENCE files. This has been rectified. Those that have already updated, make sure you go to http://yoursite.com/update.php

• Updated licence in accordance with new guidelines - cbce15ff
• Improved font-family selection - ffbf1bad
• Fix filtering by system id. - b31736f0
• Fixed Mobile Safari support - e01820bf
• Added alternate navigation styles to cater for touchscreens - 21791636
• Added mousedown listener to improve Mobile Safari support - 2f687fca
• Added html.active className for styling purposes - 74739a9a
• Made Symphony class abstract and implement Singleton - 7897edb6
• Ignoring errors generated from array_intersect() - 4d75a551
• Removed outdated 'General::realiseDirectory()' code, replacing it with a single mkdir call utilising the 'recursive' flag available since PHP 5.0.0 - 5df97845
• Explicitly set the Content-type header to text/html unless the page is an XML type - 921bb8b1
• When user wants to change email or password, require entering old password too. - 0290e0ea
• Do not hide password group on symphony/system/authors/edit page if it contains error messages. - bf914226
• Use sessions instead of cookies. Now passwords should be a bit safer. - 1b78c1d9
• Corrrected path when attempting to delete an existing file, being replaced by a new file - cd521de5
• Added the "earlier|later than" syntax. Also added support for time when matching simple dates. - 15401a69
• Tweak to how the Datasource class handles array based params - 439a2d9b
• Made extension manager explicitly test for false on install, instead of not 'true'. - 1ba6a5fd
• Sorted extensions alphabetically, instead of by status. - 9c946efe
• Updated xml highlighter to colour entities. - 2de66d0b

• Show language selection on installation page only if there are 2 or more languages available. - b97f4687
• Fix flushLog() function. - 23b59a7b
• MySQL driver can now log also full results from queries. - c347fefe
• Make query_hash used by MySQL driver to be unique, so duplicated queries will not overwrite each other. - 7683d3c8
• Some databases (at least SQLite) throw errors when using ampersands instead of 'AND' in queries. - c731572c
• Added a → (right arrow) to the entry count link columns on publish tables - 67dee270
• Simplified how page headers are stored internally - 538cd226
• Corrected code related to wrapping each field with div. In addition, instead of putting field handle in the class, it is prefixed with 'field-' to avoid class conflicts with existing CSS & JS - 815430d2
• When finding search value for linked sections, the parent section field ID is now passed into Field::fetchAssociatedEntrySearchValue() - 4ae2a98a
• Added "Delete" delegate on the index table - b69968cb
• Added 'ExtensionsAddToNavigation' delegate - 81582723
• Hide empty preferences when system is localized - 96f00b93
• Fixed erratic ordering of things like Tag lists. The creation order is now correctly retained. - 4f44664c
• Added support for fields outputs with modes. - ebc1a230
• Fix 'slow-queries' profile page. - 5e87e5e6
• Fixed bug where page title would not be displayed when custom stylesheets where applied. - 6fa6d0d8
• Field::displayPublishPanel now accepts a sixth param containing the current entry ID. - 7d4edfad
• lang attribute set correctly, based on the LANG constant - 0f2c4e2f
• Improved the way Session::start() discovers the database object - b60e81a6
• Made private functions protected to allow for Extending of the Date field - 7171a55c
• Can now choose multiple sources for pre-populating tag lists. - b30a6dac
• Added "current-time" page parameter. - cb45e87c
• Fixed small bug with _t function - ffa5e539
• Improved Lang translation functions. Added Dictionary class. - 6900b6c6
• Implement previousVersion number argument for extension->update() function. - 56ab7f68

• Issue #121 Fixes new bug introduced by #109
• Issue #133 Fixed some minor potential issues on more strict hosts - c37ee888
• Issue #136 Addressed some problems with disappearing uploads upon edit - f52c04cd
• Issue #123 Extension->update() now passed a "previousVersion" parameter
• Issue #128 Old Maintenance mode setting in config file removed from installer
• Issue #126 Image rewrite rules now contain a [LC,N] modifier for the benefit of Windows servers faf8e8e2
• Issue #135 Frontend::instance checks for existence of Frontend instead of Administration - 3ac3acbb
• Issue #147 Correcting some alignment problems in Administration
• Issue #144 Fixed Admin navigation in Firefox
• Issue #247 Author fields pre-select the currently logged in author
• Issue #137 Ampersands in text input fields correctly encoded
• Issue #130 Fixed filtering by System ID
• Issue #129 Styling for page errors/notices fixed. Should now be visible.
• Issue #124 Fixed form input text color problem
• Issue #117 Fixed datasources/info page rendering problem
• Issue #288 Fixed email header encoding & missing headers issues
• Issue #114 Change Password group hidden even when it contains errors.
• Issue #112 Removed General::realiseDirectory
• Issue #109 datasource.section.php avoids calls to buildDSRetrivalSQL on non-object
• Issue #108 Special page type headers set correctly
• Issue #144 Remove File correctly removes the file from system
• Issue #107 Fixed typo in error message
• Issue #105 Add the "later|earlier" than syntax for date fields
• Issue #104 Extensions that don't return true during install fail to install

Hooray, great job all!

Yum.

Kudos to all involved...

Wonderful job guys.

Symphony does not get the recognition it deserves out in the wild. The learning curve (compared to Wordpress or EE) is a little steeper. The documentation is in the works, I know. We need a tutorial for building a basic sites with Symphony. A few static pages and a blog with archives.

The best guy for this would be Stephen (bauhouse), can we as the community commission Stephen to finish of his infamous articles for the 2.0.1 release, i would be more than happy to contribute at least 25%... Somebody can do some screencasts?

(For those of you who are thinking, you start we follow, unfortunately I'm not as skilled in Symphony yet, I'm on EE and i desperately want to move to Symphony.)

Any thoughts on this would be great, please share you're ideas, so we can bring the attention to Symphony that it deserves.

Why not write an article about why you want to switch from EE to Symphony?

I would but, the people who will end up reading it and wish to try symphony for themselves will be stuck at the same point as i am. we need a Symphony 101. a case study to build a basic site. if symphony wants to progress it must open its arms to new comers.

I tried building my latest project in Expression Engine, but aborted the process after being about 75% of the way done. It was bloated and confusing for me and the client to work in. I hated it so much that I went ahead and restarted in Symphony -- on my own time. It was worth it and it didn't take much time at all.

I came at both CMSs with zero knowledge of either and found Symphony to be much easier to handle and learn than Expression Engine. Granted, the initial learning curve is steeper with Symphony, (I had a leg up with some basic XSLT knowledge) but once I got passed the hump, things went incredibly fast and I was able to do a lot more things with my data than I could with EE. Even though EE had a lot of plug-ins and extensions, I felt limited by it.

It seems like EE gets a lot of praise in the design community as being the best CMS for designers, but I didn't see that. Maybe I didn't learn EE right. I'm a print designer who moved to Web design and I don't have much programming skills, so that might have been part of the problem.

I do agree that in order for Symphony to gain more ground it needs some solid 101 tutorials that go over the system, XSLT and CMS best practices. I'm still unsure about some things and don't quite feel confident enough to create a tutorial, yet, but I'd be glad to give it a try.

Maybe we need to make a thread that links to everyone who has made a Symphony tutorial or compile a list somewhere. I've seen and learned a lot of stuff from this forum's users' blogs that we might be halfway to a getting started guide already.

hasakanyol, you are right! The problem seems to be: All of us love building the web with Symphony so much, so we simply do not find the time to care enough for Symphony. (This is curious, isn't it?) Speaking for myself: I hope to find enough time in spring to really help the community. Until then, I have lots of freelance jobs, and Symphony definitely is one of the reasons for this. To a certain extent, my business is built on Symphony.

I am sure that many of us hope to find more time to care for the "basics". We love Symphony, and we love to play our small role here in the community. But I hope that with Symphony 2 becoming more and more "stable" (have you seen 2.0.1? Hard to believe, it''s so much better than 2.0!) we will have more energy for opening our arms to newcomers.

BTW: The forum always did welcome newcomers. All the Symphonians work here so much. And they have big hearts.

@MrBlank: Hi, brother in arms! Like you, I tried Expression Engine, and I even built several websites with it. To be fair: It is surely one of the best "standard systems". As far as I can judge it, EE is programmed and maintained very professionally. But, as you pointed out, the inner concept is still far away from Symphony's flexibility.

I wish I could help putting those (101) things together. But as I wrote in my previous post, some clients are pulling hard...

thx guys for you're contribution, so if we raised a few bucks, managed to convince Stephen (bauhouse) to do a 101 series (since some of us are busy, others are not experienced enough), will you be interested in donating? i'm willing to do at least 25% myself.

The Scoop on Documentation

I made the commitment to create some documentation for Symphony 2. Its release came at a bad time but I have been making progress of late. Documentation is a very complex task because of the evolution Symphony has taken and the power that it offers.

I hope to get much done this weekend as I have set aside time solely for documentation. I wouldn't bother exploring other avenues as I have already documented a fair amount. I will release the document in whatever state it is at next Thursday for feedback and recommendations.

This is not a simple article.

Looking forward to it, Mark!

thx Lewis, its good to know you made progress. We understand and appreciate you're hard-work.

I was just trying to enable new comers (including myself) to start with a solid foundation. I still believe, having some screencasts, 101 series or a PDF book, will enable entry and create 'buzz' on the web, the sort of thing Symphony lacks, what other CMS do wonderfully is market themselves very well. So creating screencasts, pdf's and articles is born out of necessity by others to get people to visit his/her site, in return profit from ads or publicity etc.

Symphony is free/open but its difficult to get started with good grasp of the underlining foundations. Most people have (x)html + css knowledge, but understanding how symphony ticks is another story altogether.

Im looking forward to the official doc's, to shed some light. thanks for listening.

Thanks so much Mark! We appreciate everything you do for this community! Thanks again!

Mark, your labor is appreciated! Is there a way the documentation might be implemented into some sort of wiki so that the community might provide examples of how one might use different methods and so forth? Perhaps, even a small team of technical writers/editors could then build off of what you're doing under your oversight?

FYI: As much as I really don't care much for IE, I thought I'd let you all know that IE7 (Vista Home Premium SP1 64 bit) is showing some conditional commenting on the login screen (ironically conditional for IE!). See the attached image.

I'm running an Apache/mySQL/PHP 5 install using Xampp running IIS.