RocketTheme Blog
Gantry 5: Beta 2 Released
- Friday, 03 April 2015 14:05
Gantry 5’s beta is one week old and we have released the second beta release thanks in large part to our incredible community.
Within hours of releasing the initial Joomla beta for Gantry 5, the positive feedback and suggestions started pouring in from beta testers trying the new framework and free Hydrogen template in their own testing environments.
Before the weekend was over, some of our beta testers had even created their own websites based on Gantry 5.
Our team began working on any issues and/or improvement suggestions made by the community. We are pleased to say that to date we have closed 34 tester-submitted tickets and have made significant steps towards Gantry 5’s next major beta phase.
Changes and Updates
The Gantry 5 beta 2 is primarily a bug fix and optimization release. As the first phase of beta concentrates on the administrator, this update focuses on improvements and bug fixes associated with administering the site.
One important change we made was eliminating the requirement of fileinfo PHP support, as this wasn’t being utilized by the framework any longer.
Additionally, we were set Joomla JS/CSS assets to not load unless they were required.
A KeyValue field was also added for things like tag attributes, meta values, etc. This is important because it enables the user to have more control over the page’s content and how it renders. The Tag Attributes field can be added to each section, and each block.
You can find a full breakdown of changes in the Gantry 5 beta 2 changelog.
Participating in the Beta
If you would like to contribute to the Gantry 5 beta, and directly assist in creating the next generation Gantry Framework, there are several ways to do so.
The easiest way to help out is by simply downloading the beta release of Gantry 5 via Github and trying it out for yourself.
If you run across any issues or have any suggestions for improvement, you can submit an issue report on GitHub letting us know. Our team will review the issue and work on a solution.
If you run across an issue or have an idea for improvement and would like to contribute to the project yourself, you can do so by making the change and submitting a pull request. Your pull request will be reviewed by the team, and if approved, will become part of Gantry 5. We recommend reaching out via the Gitter chat before doing so to avoid putting in the work on a problem that the team is already working on.
Keep in mind that even at this stage, Gantry 5 is in an early beta and it is not recommended for use on any live site. Doing so will undoubtedly come with issues as new updates are released that could potentially break functionality of your site.
Additionally, the current beta build does not include all of the features and functionality we have planned for the final release.
Gantry 5 is coming together very nicely thanks to our incredibly active and passionate community. We are working towards the next major phase of the beta coming soon, and look forward to seeing the incredible things the community creates with it.
For more information about Gantry 5, please check out these other blog posts from our ongoing series:
- Gantry 5: Requirements and Details
- Gantry 5: Built from the Ground Up for Speed
- Gantry 5: Regarding Backward Compatibility
- Gantry 5: Incredibly Easy to Use
- Gantry 5: Reimagining the Layout Manager
- Gantry 5: Rethinking How Positions Work in Joomla
- Gantry 5: Meet the Menu Editor
- Gantry 5: Powerful New Font, Color, and Icon Pickers
- Gantry 5: Joomla Beta Released