We're thrilled to announce the beta release of Elgg 6, packed with a slew of enhancements, updates, and new features that elevate your experience with our platform. This release represents a significant milestone in our ongoing commitment to delivering top-notch performance, security, and usability. You can find the v6.0.0-beta.1 download in the download section.

Let's dive into some of the key highlights of this release:

Major changes

Listing the complete changelog here wouldn't make for a readable blog post, if you're interested in the changelog check it out on GitHub. Another great resource to read before upgrading to the new version are the upgrade notes.

CKEditor Upgrade (v41.3)
We've upgraded CKEditor to the latest version (v41.3), bringing in a host of improvements and new features to enhance your content editing experience. With this update, you can expect smoother editing workflows and better compatibility across various devices and browsers.

Doctrine/DBAL Update (v4)
In our quest to keep our database layer robust and efficient, we've updated to the latest version of Doctrine/DBAL (v4). This ensures better database management and compatibility, leading to improved performance and reliability for your applications.

Experimental Core Enhancement: Undo Removal of Items
As part of our ongoing efforts to innovate and improve your experience, we're excited to introduce an experimental feature to our core functionality: the ability to undo removal of items. Please note that this feature is currently in its experimental phase, designed to gather feedback and refine functionality based on user experiences. With this addition, you can explore the potential of easily recovering accidentally deleted items, providing a safety net for your workflow. While this feature is still in development, we encourage you to test it out and share your feedback with us. Together, we can shape its evolution and ensure it meets your needs and expectations.

Special thanks to the dedicated students from the Saxion Hogeschool in The Netherlands for their valuable contributions to the development of the undelete feature. Your enthusiasm and expertise have been instrumental in bringing this functionality to life. We're grateful for your time.

View Enhancements
We've revamped various page elements and improved CSS to deliver a more visually appealing and intuitive user interface. Additionally, we've fine-tuned sidebar search forms and optimized the usage of headings across different parts of the page, enhancing overall navigation, accesibility and readability.

Improved Session Management
The login event has been reintroduced for logging purposes, enabling better session management and monitoring. This enhancement bolsters security measures and provides administrators with valuable insights into user activities.

JavaScript Modernization
We've dropped RequireJS in favor of ECMAScript modules, embracing modern JavaScript standards for better performance and maintainability. This update streamlines the frontend development process and improves code organization.

Icon Handling
We've standardized the storage of entity icon cropping coordinates, ensuring consistency and simplifying icon management. This enhancement streamlines icon-related workflows and improves the overall developer experience.

PHP Internationalization Module Requirement
To enhance language support and localization capabilities, we now require the PHP Intl module.

Test Suite Update
Our test suite has been updated to PHPUnit 10.5, incorporating the latest features and improvements in the testing framework. This ensures thorough testing coverage and maintains code quality standards.

Security Enhancement
Response forward URLs are now secure by default, mitigating potential security risks and bolstering overall platform security. This enhancement reinforces our commitment to providing a secure environment for your applications.

The new version of Elgg has a lot of exciting changes and improvements, but to make sure it's ready for prime time, we need your help! We're currently looking for testers who can help us identify any issues that may have slipped through the cracks during development. If you're interested in testing the new version and providing feedback, we'd love to hear from you! If you find any bugs please report them on GitHub.

In addition to testers, we're also looking for volunteers to help us with translations (take a look at this guide). Elgg is used all over the world, and we want to make sure that the new version is accessible to as many people as possible. If you're fluent in a language other than English, we'd love your help translating the new version of Elgg.

By contributing your time and expertise as a tester or translator, you'll be making an important contribution to the Elgg community and helping to ensure that the new version is as stable and usable as possible. If you're interested in getting involved, please don't hesitate to reach out to us.

We're excited about the possibilities this release unlocks and look forward to your feedback as we continue to evolve and improve our platform. Thank you for your continued support and trust in our product.