DotNetNuke 4.6.0 release is coming

DotNetNuke 4.6.0 is quickly approaching the release date.  We have gone through 2 different beta releases and have now packaged and released RC1 to our testers and benefactors.  While we have implemented a new beta testing group and added more default test cases into our test tracker, we are still not getting the level of testing that we feel is necessary.  We had a lot of people sign up for the beta test who ended up not being active participants which really hurt our testing efforts.  Out of nearly 60 people accepted into the program, fewer than 1/3 actually contributed feedback on the quality of the release.  We will continue to open up beta testing for future releases in order to increase our quality and ensure that we are getting feedback early in the release testing cycle.  For those who submitted feedback, we appreciate your efforts.

At this point we have addressed every Showstopper bug in Gemini and addressed quite a few major and minor bugs as well.  4.6 will see a number of new enhancements and new features, many of which have been blogged about by various team members.  I want to personally thank those core team members and project leads who have helped get this release ready in time for OpenForce Europe '07.  Specifically, I want to thank Cathal, Vicenc, Erik, Sebastian, Stefan, Mike, Dan and of course Charles.  Your hard work in fixing bugs and coding the enhancements, sometimes on very short notice, really helped pull this together.  I also want to thank Alex who spent a lot of time on this release getting bugs validated and moved over to the private  bug tracker for the team to fix.

This was really the first release where I have been actively involved in the entire cycle, from scoping the release, to coordinating bug fixes and ensuring we were getting testing accomplished.  For the past 4 years this has been primarily Shaun's responsibility and I am not sure how he was able to pull it off along with all of his other project and corporate responsibilities.

Below is a list all of the bugs, enhancements and new features which were addressed in this release.  You can see all of these in the 4.6.0 Roadmap, which will become the 4.6.0 Changelog once we go final.  At this point we don't expect any changes between now and the final release this weekend.  We should be dogfooding on DotNetNuke.com later tonight which is the last major hurdle before the release.

Finally, I want to welcome aboard two new project sponsors: Robert Half Technology, and AspDotNetStorefront.  Our project sponsors and advertisers help us keep the lights on, so we are very grateful to them for their support.