K2 version 2.6.8 is now available to download for everyone. This is a maintenance update and it includes performance optimizations & bug fixes. The highlight of this release is the switch to the InnoDB storage engine for new installations of K2. In non-geek terms this means a lot better database read/write performance on websites with high traffic and/or large number of K2 items, comments etc.
Nuevvo has just released Takai, the official K2 demo site, as a free Joomla!/K2 template, available for everyone to download and use.
This new iteration of the demo site has been fully modernized to be responsive, uses multi-color variations (with the option to create yours as well), is built using flexible grids, features cool off-canvas navigation (when on mobile) and uses Nuevvo's awesome no-framework template parameters & standard features.
Takai is the best starting point for everyone just joining the K2 Community.
So why this move to Github you ask? Well, Github will now make it a lot easier for casual developers (and experts of course) to submit code to the K2 code base. Previously this was a very tedious process with Google Code, such that most third-party additions or improvements were essentially completed manually via the bug tracker.
This also means that bug solving will now be a lot faster and more transparent.
Finally, since we're moving to a new code repo, you'll notice that https://getk2.org/bugtracker now properly redirects over to the Github "issues" section of the K2 project.
We also plan to utilize Github's "wiki" features to gradually have a proper and up-to-date documentation on the latest K2 code base.
Today we're releasing K2 version 2.6.7, a maintenance update which adds minor improvements to anti-spam security and frontend ACL, while resolving the first ever VEL report for K2.
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If you haven't yet understood why, let me clarify...
The K2 Community is a very popular site. It's got an Alexa rank of about 10.000 and a 7/10 Google Pagerank. It does a little over 1 million page views per month on average. Spammers love such facts. Not spam bots, actual human spammers.
The past 2 weeks we are being heavily spammed by real human beings with regular Joomla!, Twitter or Facebook accounts (you need a mobile number to get a FB account and bots don't have mobiles). Not mention this has happened again (back when we hosted the community site on the Ning platform which is supposed to have a much better platform to fight spam)... Guess when? When effing Iron Man 2 was released. Spammers love blockbusters.
So what now? We're temporarily disabling new user signups for a few days in order to harden security measures on the site. That includes social logins as well. Fighting real human spam is a very tough situation to deal with. That means we need to add more services like Akismet and extend the integration with StopForumSpam.com to better fight these spammers that have been identified in these huge spammer databases. We also need to improve Kunena's code to allow for quick spam user banning. And since the version of Kunena we're using won't be updated anymore, we're going to get our hands dirty :)
So please bear with us for a few days until we sort the matter. It's a tough call, but I guess it's the price to pay for a popular project.
P.S. If you need to ask a support question and you are not already a K2 Community member, please use Twitter if possible to direct your questions to @k2devs - we'll do our best to answer you there.
Update on May 15th, 2013: We have re-enabled signups to the community.
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Today we're releasing K2 version 2.6.6, a bug fix update which address redirect issues with the newly introduced Advanced SEF options, plus some minor performance improvements.
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We were pleasantly surprised today when we read HostGator's blog post on the top 10 Joomla! extensions, ranking K2 as #1 in their list!
HostGator is one of the largest shared hosting companies in the world (part of the Endurance Int'l Group of companies which also owns Bluehost) so it's really an honor for the K2 project to be ranked #1 Joomla! extension according to them. I don't know if this list is just a "snapshot" of what's hot in the Joomla! community or a list based on stats HostGator gathers from hosting probably thousands of Joomla! sites. In any case it's flattering :)
We were actually double-flattered as JoomlaWorks since we were the only company with 2 extensions on this top 10 list. Frontpage Slideshow ranked #6 essentially declared the best slideshow system for Joomla!.
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The just released v2.6.5 fixes a couple of nasty bugs found in K2 v2.6.4 which was released last week. These bugs were only spotted when using the new advanced SEF options and the new tag normalization option introduced in v2.6.4.
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Although not even 10 days have passed since we released K2 v2.6.3, we decided it would be a shame not to release this new version 2.6.4 ASAP. You see, this new release brings some SEF URL enhancements which we know many K2 users will love. To quickly sum things up we have added the new K2 advanced SEF options, tag normalization options, jQuery 1.8.3 and 1.9.1, improved the transliteration logic introduced in v2.6.3 and removed 2 obsolete online image editors (used via the backend).
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