vBulletin 5.2.6 Beta 1 is now available.

[vB.Org System]

vBulletin 5.2.6 Beta 1 is now available to all vBulletin 5 Download customers with an active license. This version contains fixes and updates to over 180 issues in the software.

[h2]Events[/h2]
We are proud to announce the addition of the Event content Type to vBulletin 5 Connect. The Event system is designed to allow you to schedule events with your community members. Either online or offline. Instead of simply copying the calendar system from previous versions of vBulletin, the Event system is designed to provide the same flexibility of other content types in vBulletin 5 Connect. As the administrator, you can decide where community members can create events. In addition, events are searchable through the standard search engine. Events are no longer buried in a sub-system. When creating events, users can provide the time(s) of the events and location. Users can also provide a full description using rich text editing and attachments like any other content type. When combined with vBulletin Messenger, you can have live conversations about your events. You can create events in any channel and control where they are created using the new "Can create event" permission. Events are the successor to the vBulletin 4.X Calendar feature.

New Permission
"Can Create Events" is new permission has been added to the system. This can be configured in the Usergroup Manager and under Channel Permissions. This will allow Administrators to control who can create events and where they can be created. You can disable Event creation completely by setting this to No for all usergroups.

Upcoming Events Module - As the Site Administrator, you can place the Upcoming Events module on any page to allow users to find events from your site. It is designed with infinite scrolling and will automatically load more events as you scroll to the bottom of the module.

In addition to the Upcoming Event modules, all the default search modules used on your site have been updated to include the Event content type. If you have made changes to these modules, you will have to edit them to include the Event content type if you wish.

[h2]vBulletin Messenger[/h2]
Based on customer feedback, we continue to make improvements to the vBulletin Messenger feature. While many of these are improvements to the interface or performance improvements, there is a new feature added to vBulletin Messenger in 5.2.6. Now the owner of the chat can add new members to ongoing chats. To do this, you would simply click on the gear icon at the top of the chat window. Each new member will get full access to the chat up to the time they were added and can participate from that point on.

[h2]Other Changes[/h2]
Channel Description Module - Previous versions of vBulletin allowed you to show the forum description on a page. This has been implemented in vBulletin 5 as the Channel Description Module. Placing this module on any channel page will show the description at the module's location.

RTL Support
A majority of outstanding RTL issues have been resolved throughout the software. We would like to extend a special thanks to our beta testers for their help with this. These fixes enable us to provide better support as we continue to work towards full UTF-8 compliance throughout vBulletin. If you use an RTL language and continue to have problems, please make sure that you are using one of the provided styles without template or CSS edits while testing.

Options
Several obsolete options have been removed from the AdminCP. Either the functionality controlled by these options no longer exists or there better ways to control them. These are:
"Use Legacy (Vertical) Postbit Template"
"Friends Per Page on Full Friends List"
"Show Last Post on Profile Page"
"Avatars Per-Page"
"Show Forum Descriptions in Forum Listings"
"Last Thread Title Maximum Displayed Characters"
"Show Moderator Column"
"Check Topic Subscription"
"Throttle Check Period (minutes)"
"Enabled User Profile Features"
"Queue Search Updates"

[h2]System Requirements[/h2]
Minimum PHP Version: 5.5.0
Minimum MySQL Version: 5.1.5

Recommended PHP Version: 7.1 or higher
Recommended MySQL Version: 5.7.0 or higher
Recommended MariaDB Version: 10+

PHP 5.5.0 Deprecation
PHP 5.5.X has reached end of life and is no longer supported by the PHP Group. Due to this, we are going to increase the minimum required version of PHP to 5.6.X in a future version of vBulletin.

Current Version Support Schedule:

• Active Version - 5.2.5
• Security Patch - 5.2.4
• Security Patch - 5.2.3
• No Patch Release - 5.2.2 or earlier.

[h2]Discussion[/h2]
If you have any questions about these changes you may discuss them here: https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/node/4363123

[warning]This version of vBulletin should not be deployed on Production Servers at this time. [/warning]