Happy New Year to all my readers. I hope that 2015, as far as Kunena is concerned, will start on a happier note than the situation as we saw at the end of 2014. Since the release of K 3.0.6 in July last year, there has been very little news about Kunena from the development team prompting a number of questions to be asked on the Kunena forum about what is happening and whether the project is still “alive”. Fortunately, for all of us who have been using Kunena for a number of years, it appears that a new release [K 3.0.7] is expected soon! This is good news after waiting six months for some relief concerning many problems that have been reported over that time.

Although the release of K 3.0.7 is long overdue, this news could not come at a better time because K 3.0.7 will be needed by people who adopt J! 3.4 when the new version of Joomla is released (rumoured to be in a couple of weeks' time). Put another way, when J! 3.4 is released, the current stable release of Kunena will not install on Joomla 3.4.

Correction
Based on new information, I need to correct information about K 3.0.6 that I previously believed to be correct. I have been assured by one of the Kunena developers that K 3.0.6 will install on J! 3.4. I hope this new information lessens any concerns people may have about the future of Kunena and Joomla. The real test, of course, will be when J! 3.4 is released as a stable version.

For those who are interested in K 3.0.7, please read on.

In the last month I have received a couple of emails and questions from some of my friends concerning the reasons why I write this blog. Put simply, I write this blog because I can.

I don't mean that I am “allowed”, or given permission by anyone, to write. I don't mean that I have a talent for being able to string together a few sentences that make any more sense than what anyone else might write. When I say that I “can” write it is because I mean that I may have some additional information that, in the absence of what is officially published at the Kunena website, people may not be aware of and I see my purpose is to inform others about what is happening by deducing, from what I have seen written in various other forums, what people might reasonably want to know and expect.

I don't always get it right and I'm happy to be corrected if I may have posted anything that is not correct. I believe that it's more important to get the conversation flowing than leave people wondering what's happening, to assume the worst and wrongly accuse the developers of having a hidden agenda and keeping things secret.

Download latest [development] version of K 3.0.7 here

The list of changes—one or two new features and changed software requirements—for K 3.0.7 are outlined in the release notes. For those who plan to install K 3.0.7 for the first time (or upgrade from an older version of older version of Kunena) it important that they read this information beforehand. The biggest difference in K 3.0.7 is in the installation procedure; although the installation is performed in the same way, the new installation procedure uses jQuery instead of Mootools.

There has been no formal announcement about when K 3.0.7 will be released. The first knowledge I had about a proposed release date for K 3.0.7 was a couple of months ago but no-one has attempted to assemble an installation package or trial it (using the Kunena website as a test site) until just after the new year commenced. I am sharing a link to a development version of K 3.0.7—the same version used at the Kunena website—with a few caveats:

1. This version is not thoroughly tested;
2. if people download and install it on their websites, they accept the risk that it may not work properly;
3. if people discover problems with this version of K 3.0.7 they should report those problems to the developers; and
4. this version is only available English—there is no language pack for K 3.0.7 for non-English websites.

Download K 3.0.7 here

This week K3.0.7 will be released. "810", Status update?, 27-Jan-2015

Like everyone else, I will be very interested to read the official announcement about the release of K 3.0.7 when it is made. I do not know when that will occur.

Update
Since writing this article on 27 January, the developer who wrote "this week K3.0.7 will be released" has deleted that information from the Kunena forum. Unfortunately this leaves us with further uncertainty about the time frame and the capacity of the Kunena team to deliver this much-anticipated version.

About the author:

Michael Russell has worked in the information technology industry since 1971 and, since retiring from the workforce in 2007, is a website hobbyist specialising in Joomla, a former member of the Kunena project for more than 8 years and contributor on The Joomla Forum™. The opinions expressed in this article are entirely those of the author. View his profile here.