Update: Ninjaboard is now in RC1 status. You can now safely install 1.0 on a 0.5 site, and downgrade anytime. Work on RC2 and stable have begun.

The fifth beta release is not feature complete yet but already includes all the major features you expect for a forum solution for Joomla.

What's new in 1.0 Beta 5

• Views like Forums in the admin now have maintenance mode that runs once per week. They will automatically fix table relations and such when needed.
• Full downgrade support. Ninjaboard 0.5 tables are backed up during install, and will be recovered during uninstall to allow downgrades.
• Users can now be assigned to more than one usergroup at once.
• Possible to adjust spacing between forum boxes
• Custom designed premium topic icons, exclusively for Ninjaboard.
• Person page frontend. Shows the avatar, user rank and the persons latest topics.
• Auto-translator, updates your NB language file with untranslated strings for your convenience. Turn on Language debugging under Global Config to activate it.
• Tools screen upgraded
• Norwegian translation on frontend.
• Ninjaboard Stats Admin Module upgraded with another graph. Go to the module manager > administrator and publish it to ninjaboard-dashboard-tabs.
• Chameleons compatibility with Gantry Framework and Warp5 are improved.
• Views like the forums and topics views are now taking advantage of HMVC.
• The forms styling when creating a topic, posting a reply or editing a post are now even sexier and more user friendly.
• Usergroups are now easier to setup, as you get a live, human readable paragraph to the right explaining your permissions configurations.
• Improved the Sample Content available on the Tools screen.
• Added option to not make the forums title in forums view linkable. Instead of just showing a permalink, or making it linkable (which don't work well in all templates)
• Much more localizable, javascript that were previously hardcoded, now uses JText for translatability.
• Forums styling is enhanced to take advantage of more CSS3 features, and subtle highlites between rows that change correctly based on mouse hover.
• Ninjaboard 1.0 can now install on a 0.5 site, and it'll present you an option to import the 0.5 data into your 1.0 database after upgrade.
• Styling of moderation tools frontend upgraded to use Chameleon.
• Advanced CSS3 (like gradients) no longer favor WebKit based browsers. Gecko and Presto support added.
• Usability of usergroup Mapper is improved. Easier to click and drag, and mouseover highlight the end point.
• phpBB3 converter vastly improved.
• Converter speeds are dramatically faster. Things that used to take 3 hours, now take literally 3 minutes.
• Major speed improvements, queries no longer recurse!
• bbCode parser upgraded to support more tags, like table tags.

What's new in 1.0 Beta 4

• Admin stats module, to be used in the dashboard.
• Two module positions now available in the admin dashboard. 'ninjaboard-dashboard-tabs' and 'ninjaboard-dashboard-accordions'.
• Backend usergroups view now display the rules so you can at glance see how the usergroups are setup.
• Forum per forum permissions got a code refactor, and UI redesign.

What's new in 1.0 Beta 3

• Built in remote updater, keeping your site up to date with the latest Ninjaboard version is just 1-click.
• multiple attachments with acl.
• core search.
• Kunena converter
• Ninjaboard 0.5 converter
• sample content importer.
• keyboard shortcuts in backend.
• improved moderation.

 What's new in 1.0 beta 1 and beta2

• Categories have been dropped in favor of unlimited depth forum hierarchies.
• Added a new and very powerful template engine which is capable of blending with any Joomla template with just a couple of clicks.
• Added core breadcrumbs support
• Backend fully Mootools 1.2, for frontend we use Jquery to be able to offer superb compatibility any template
• Coded from scratch using the Nooku Framework

The feature we are most proud and excited about is the new template engine, codename 'Cameleon'.

Ninjaboard 1.0 comes with a revolutionary template engine which supports a new technique we call 'auto-skinning' - just like a Chameleon can change it's skin pattern and colors to fit the scenery surrounding it to camouflage itself - Ninjaboard is capable of blending with any template you install in your site. It will simply take on the style of the template.

This is perhaps the most unique feature Ninjaboard 1.0 has. It allows you to literally setup your forum in hours, not days or weeks. No need anymore to edit PHP files and risk breaking your site, or hire a developer to make you a custom template. It will just work and look beautifully integrated in your site !

This also means that Ninjaboard is extremely lightweight and very fast as it's reusing as much of your sites imagery and css as much as possible. The actual css and images in Ninjaboard are just a fraction of what's common in forum extensions in general. Yes, performance also matters.

When you look at the screenshots below you might wonder how that's even possible, as it looks like Ninjaboard is very heavy on the graphics.

Clicking a screenshot will take you to a page were you'll see links to the template vendors demo site of it and such.

Also, we're currently setting up a live demo site were you get to try what you see pictured below, yourself. And since I'm on the Morph team, Creativa is guaranteed to support it.