Beta release of Yazd Discussion Forum 3.0 is available to be downloaded from SourceForge website. The following are the release notes for this stable-beta release.

Thank you for using Yazd Discussion Forum
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Beta Release notes for 3.0
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Beta Definition:
We have tested the software and think of it as stable. We have not done full testing on all features of the software and we are releasing it as a Beta release.
You can use the software in your enviornment but be aware that the software might not perform correctly.
Please advise us in case you do notice a problem with the software.

For Beta release we only have the database definition for MySQL database. We will have other definitions available later.

There are number of changes that have happened to Yazd but the structure has remained the same.
The main factor for the structure remaining is due to the lack of time and resources.

Security Advisory:
The following security bugs were present in all versions of Yazd prior to version 3.0. You need to upgrade in order to have your application secure.
- An error in how the permissions were assembled caused users to get extra permissions for the forums.
- If a user had permissions to create a message in a forum, they could reply to messages in all forums.

License Note:
If you are using Yazd to power your discussion forum, you need to acknowledge the software on your site. You can change the font, font-size or the color but you need the have the link present on your site.

Major Changes:
- User Black List
Ability to black list a user from posting messages.

- IP Black List
Ability to black list an IP from posting messages.

- FCKeditor
You can now use FCKeditor instead of textarea for composing the messages.

- File Upload (through FCKeditor)
You can now upload files and attach them to your message. The files will be stored on the file directory of the server.

- JavaScript Filter
A filter to remove all JavaScript tags from the messages.

- Image Maximum Size
A filter to change the size of the image that has been uploaded. This doesn't actually resize the image. It updates the HTML tag.

- Article Discussion
A way for you to have an article discussed. It uses the page URL as the key and have the discussions displayed. You need to create a new article discussions forums.

- Type of Thread
You can now have the user define the type of thread. The default types are Other, Announcement, Question and Comment. Using this feature you can enable a knowledgebase to your system.

- Avatars
New settings have been added to the users account. There is now Avatars available. You can easily change this to a list of icons on your server with a drop down menu.

- Users Online List
Ability to see the users that are online. This feature uses Ajax to update the list and it works on newer browsers.

- Close Thread
Admin and moderator can close a thread. This would mean that no other user would be able to post to the thread.

- Sticky Thread
Admin and moderator can mark a thread as sticky. This will display the thread on the top of the messages.

- Move Thread
You can now move a thread from one forum to a different forum from the admin site.

- SMTP authenticaion
There are changes made to facilitate the SMTP servers that need authentication.

-Bug Fixes
There are number of bug fixes that have been included in this release.

Cheers and happy Yazding.

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