netFORUM on Drupal

The demo site has been fixed, and is now available for use again. It does look like it is using an old version of xWeb, so if you don't see as many functions there as you might see listed on the Avectra Wiki, that's why.

Both the netFORUM xWeb Interface module versions have new releases, and there's now a public beta for the netFORUM Authentication module that works with Drupal 6. The netFORUM Authentication module for D5 has also been updated.

The API reference on the site was getting a little old too, so those have also been updated.

Two new features in the works for netFORUM 2.2 are getting rolled out to both the 5.x and 6.x releases soon! The first is better support for the SSO cookies used in netFORUM Authentication, made possible by matching the AES Encryption used by netFORUM. For module developers this means that there are new methods in the core netFORUM xWeb Interface module to encrypt data which eWeb can decrypt and read.

So the last releases for Drupal 5x have been put out, for the xWeb Interface and the Authentication plugin. Now it is on to porting them to Drupal 6. I haven't updated any of the APIs on this site yet for the two new modules, although most of the new functionality is around Team and Pro, without a lot of API changes or significant new functions. The order for updating the modules to Drupal 6 goes:

- xWeb Interface
- Authentiation
- Dynamic Facade Nodes
- Views

I've slowly been doing some work to update the xWeb Interface and Authentication modules to work with netFORUM Team and Pro. Along the way I fixed a few things here and there, and added an improved xWeb Testing page. It's been in a semi-ready state for a while, but I was relying on the GetQuery method to implement some common functionality between the different versions. There is a lot I can do with GetQuery in Enterprise and a lot of solid assumptions I can make about what's available to me, but in Team and Pro it is pretty reduced.

I've been doing some work recently making the core netFORUM xWeb Interface module work with netFORUM On Demand and I'm happy with that. The last bit I've been working on is making sure that the netFORUM Authentication module doesn't go too crazy with requests during the new user cycle. As soon as that's done I'll be issuing new official releases for those two modules, and then on to Drupal 6 compatibility. One feature that I'm looking forward to is the testing framework which I expect to help me greatly as I mange compatibility across netFORUM versions. So then, that makes the roadmap: