vBulletin 5.2.3 Alpha 5 is Available.

[vB.Org System]

We're pleased to announce the release of vBulletin 5.2.3 Alpha 5. Altogether over 150 issues have been resolved in vBulletin 5.2.3. This is a maintenance release with numerous bug fixes and enhancements. Altogether 150 issues were resolved in this release.

Minimum PHP Version: 5.4.0
Minimum MySQL Version: 5.1.5

Recommended PHP Version: 5.6.0 or higher
Recommended MySQL Version: 5.6.0 or higher

Warning: It is recommended that this version of vBulletin should not be deployed on Production Servers at this time. Do so at your own risk.

New Feature: Chat
The Private Message system has been enhanced to provide an AJAX-based chat feature for instant messaging within vBulletin. This will allow your users participate in active chats using a new windowed interface. Chat messages can contain images, smilies/emoticons, attachments and richtext.The system will automatically poll the server to see if new chat requests (private messages) exist and to receive new messages in existing chats. The end-user can open each chat in a new window or tab. The system provides functionality for multiple users in a single chat based on your existing private message permissions.

The Chat function can be controlled globally through Options or per usergroup using permissions. The administrator of the site can control the polling intervals so the functionality works with the resources available. You can see the new Options in the AdminCP under Settings -> Options -> Private Messaging Options.

Responsive Improvements
The navigation bar has been enhanced when viewed on smaller screens. All elements properly collapse into a drop down menu allowing for a cleaner display and less screen real estate being used. Further enhancements have been made to buttons to increase consistency across the board.

Addon Development
Additional documentation as well as a "Hello World" package has been added to the do_not_upload folder in order to help administrators get started with creating addons in vBulletin 5 Connect. Please note: This will not be available to Cloud site owners.


Database Cleanup
If you upgraded from an older version of vBulletin, there are a number of tables that are considered deprecated and are no longer used in vBulletin 5 Connect. These tables may contain a considerable amount of data and increase the size of your database storage. In order to streamline the database, we are working to remove these unused tables. The tables removed in this version are:

blog
blog_attachmentlegacy
blog_category
blog_categorypermission
blog_categoryuser
blog_custom_block
blog_custom_block_parsed
blog_deletionlog
blog_editlog
blog_featured
blog_groupmembership
blog_grouppermission
blog_hash
blog_moderation
blog_moderator
blog_pinghistory
blog_rate
blog_read
blog_relationship
blog_search
blog_searchresult
blog_sitemapconf
blog_subscribeentry
blog_subscribeuser
blog_summarystats
blog_tachyentry
blog_text
blog_textparsed
blog_trackback
blog_trackbacklog
blog_user
blog_usercss
blog_usercsscache
blog_userread
blog_userstats
blog_views
blog_visitor


Once these tables are deleted, the information will be gone forever. We suggest that you make a backup of them if you feel you might need the data in the future for some other application.


Discussion
You may discuss this release here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/node/4346134

Current Version Support Schedule:

Active Version - 5.2.2
Security Patch - 5.2.1
Security Patch - 5.2.0
No Patch Release - 5.1.10 or earlier.