The latest release of the Chatterblock plugin v3.1 is now available. The plugin will now work with Register_Globals disabled and has been tested on MySQL 5.0 (non-strict mode). There have been a few changes to support GL v1.4.1 themes and support now for SPAMX filtering of public messages as well as private messages via the /tell command.

There are no database changes so all that should be required is to replace the changed files or complete directories. Existing sites running version 3.x need to replace all the plugin files and run the plugin upgrade which just needs to update the version number.

References: Download Link and please post feedback and issues in this topic on portalparts.com.

As you probably know, Geeklog was taking part in the Google Summer of Code for the first time this year. The program officially ended on August 31 and here's a somewhat belated roundup:

Four of our students completed their tasks successfully and their code has since been added to the Geeklog CVS. We are now working on wrapping up the development of the next version to get our student's accomplishments out to you, our users.

So the next version of Geeklog will have a new and much more user-friendly installation script, thanks to the work of Matthew West. Also, you will no longer have to edit config.php but can use the configuration GUI that Aaron Blankstein developed. And the webservices API, implemented by Ramnath Iyer, will open up new ways to interact with your Geeklog site, many of which have yet to be explored.

Last, but not least, the chimera known as Geeklog 2 also made some significant progress, thanks to the article plugin, written by Damien Hodgkin.

Thanks a lot to all of our students, the mentors, and the other members of the community who helped us out during the course of the program. The biggest thanks, of course, goes to Google for making all of this possible.

I have created RPM packages for Geeklog 1.4.1, Forum 2.7, Filemgmt 1.5.2, Captcha 3.0.2 and Media Gallery 1.5.0. Packages do install all software within /etc/geeklog, /usr/share/geeklog, /var/lib/geeklog and /var/log/geeklog directories, trying to stick as much as possible with the FHS 2.3 (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard). Basically anyone with minimal skills (to know hoe to use mysqladmin, mysql and any text editor) and with a working Red Hat™ Enterprise Linux 5 based OS (CentOS 5, etc.) may install Geeklog, Forum, Filemgnt, Captcha and Media Gallery in less than three minutes.

Software repository for fresh and new Geeklog installations, with RPM and SRPM packages, courtesy of Alcance Libre, is located at: http://www.alcancelibre.org/al/webapps/.