New features: TER2
With the increasing amount of extensions and popularity of the TYPO3 extension repository the need for a more stable, faster and more flexible TER arose. At the T3BOARD05 Karsten Dambekalns, Michael Hirdes and I started writing a first concept for TER2. With only a few changes this concept has now become real code.
The main improvements over the previous approach are:
- Extensions are stored as files and allow for mirroring the whole repository to different servers and providers. At the same time it gives a great performance boost for the dowload of extensions
- Frontend, core repository, documentation and management are modules which work independently and can be placed on different servers
- Internally extension manuals are converted into the DocBook format which makes it easy to create various output formats automatically. In the future DocBook will be the preferred source format for documentation in the TYPO3 project
- The main repository offers a SOAP interface which provides webservices for the new Extension Manager and future extensions
- All extensions which appear in the official repository are security reviewed
- ... and many more (of course ...)
Many upgrades
As TER2 requires PHP5 and to keep the downtime as short as possible, we will upgrade various components at the same time:
- PHP will be upgraded to 5.1
- MySQL will be upgraded to 4.1 and the whole database converted to UTF8
- The new TYPO3.org will be based on TYPO3 4.0beta2 and TemplaVoila 1.0
- Completely new HTML and CSS templates which reflect our new corporate design
During the upgrade process all public extensions will be imported from the current extension repository. All private extensions will be discarded but of course you will still own all extension keys you registered.
New design
When the new installation goes online it will wear its new suit already - the new design which was created during the T3BRAND process. The design itself and all the friendly ghosts who helped making it reality will be introduced in its own announcement. For now just keep in mind that the HTML and CSS on TYPO3.org will be a beta version which still contains some glitches we're aware of.
Security reviews
On major step towards a even more secure TYPO3 is the introduction of security reviews. In TER2 all extensions which appear in the official repository have to pass a basic security check done by at least two members of the security team. Although it will be still possible to access unreviewed extensions (after ignoring a lot of warning signs) it is recommended to only use reviewed extensions on production sites. Initially not all popular extensions will appear in the "reviewed" section because checking them all is a big task. To accelerate this process, you can support the security team by offering organisational, financial or other help.
TYPO3.org offline
It is inevitable that TYPO3.org goes completely offline for a short time during the upgrade process. Unfortunately we cannot estimate exactly when this will happen because many factors play into our schedule. Please be prepared that TYPO3.org is offline either tonight or tomorrow night.
Thanks and good luck!
At this point I would like say thanks to the many helpers who made the new design, the new extension repository and the various improvements possible. A big thank you goes to our friends at punkt.de who enabled me developing the TER2 and do a great job in hosting typo3.org
Finally I'd like to wish Wolfgang Zenker and me good luck with the upgrade ...