And it looks like it’s going to bring a lot of goodies with it. Rick and the crew just migrated the pMachine website over to ExpressionEngine 1.3 Beta in preparation. It was still running under their pMachine software previously because that had a forum functionality that EE didn’t… until now. The new forum module for ExpressionEngine is impressive and is one of the things I’m most excited about. We have forums here on SEB already running under a different package, but integrating it into the main site hasn’t ever worked quite right and it used a separate membership database than EE does. As a result it’s a bit on the neglected side, but with the new forum module for EE I hope to change all of that.
In addition to that there’s going to be a bunch of new features in EE itself. A full list of changes hasn’t been made available yet, but digging around on the new homepage in the Feature Grid reveals a few tidbits of what’s coming. Things such as a Spell Checker, Member Avatars, Member Photos, and Member Signatures, support for both the MetaWeblog and MovableType APIs, and a new Updated Sites module. It’s been awhile since the last major update for ExpressionEngine was released so it should be fun seeing what the new version can do. The new forum module alone should make for some interesting possibilities. So stay tuned as I suspect the beta will probably be opened up to the public in about a week or so.
Ooh, a spell checker. It’s the little things that mean a lot!
I really like the look of the forums. I hope that they aren’t too expensive and easily customizable to fit a sites theme. What I’m most pumped about is the ping module which I had no idea was coming and is Free
I can hardly wait ‘till it finally gets released.