Meld Forums, version 2.0 is currently in development and is planned for release some time in Q3. While based upon the first Meld Forums plugin for the Mura CMS, this version is being released by a completely different company (Meld Solutions) with brand new licensing options.
We are developing it as a "bridging" build between the v1 Fusebox commercial application and future Meld Solutions applications. This is because that while Meld Forums v2 will be a FW/1 application and use many of the "extensible/expandable" tools that all Meld apps will use, it won't be built upon our base Meld Manager application. We're choosing to do this because a) we want the open source version out sooner, and b) most of the Meld Manager development is happening in parallel with the development of Meld Ecommerce.
As mentioned, Meld Forums v2 will be built upon the much lighter, much faster FW/1 framework. While this isn't important to non-developers, users will see significant improvements in performance (especially when the application first starts up). We have also greatly improved the administrative interface, making it much easier to manage even large forum setups.
The biggest improvement will be the "extensible" nature of Meld Forums. From launch, it will be possible to build "addin" applications that can give your forums whole new sets of functionality. For instance, we will be launching a Community Support addin for Meld Forums that will let posters mark responses as correct/incorrect and earn points for submitting correct answers. Colin will be posting a blog on Community Support in greater detail later this week.
It will also be possible to build completely separate Mura plugins that expand a Meld Forums application. A plugin for Meld Forums called Meld Tech Support will allow forum managers to create useful cross-linked FAQs and knowledge bases that are searched along with normal forum searches. While we'll be releasing many addin and plugin extensions for Meld Forums over the coming months, we'll also be encouraging others to develop their own.
Meld Forums extensions will be able to control and add to the content normally displayed by Meld Forums. This will include adding buttons, altering or replacing content, and including content in new areas, including adding new sections to the Meld Forums profile and profile administration areas. The power and flexibility of these extensions will increase over time, but suffice it to say you will be able to do a lot with version 2.0.
Other improvements we are looking at including in the v2 release include:
- improved SEO/human readable urls
- improved searching
- improved caching
- the ability to selectively add conferences and/or forums to a page (i.e. a "support" conference in one area of your site, a "discussion" forums in another)
- easier styling
Whether all these features will be available immediately or in a future update will depend upon timing and our release targets.
Meld Forums will be released under a dual GPL 2.0 / commercial license. Essentially this means that you will be able to freely (yes "free"ly) download and use Meld Forums on your site according to the GPL license, but also purchase Meld Forums if you do not want to be constrained by the GPL (i.e. all code modifications must be released back to us and be made publicly available). We'll have more details on the licensing as we approach our final release date.
If you have any questions about Meld Forums 2.0, or want to suggest new features and/or addins/plugins, visit the forums on Meld Forums.
