XOOPS, long a favorite of the open source content management community and a finalist for Packt Publishing's 2008 Open Source CMS Awards, is on the cusp of a final release of XOOPS 2.3.XOOPS 2.3 Release Candidate 3 was made available for download on September 16, and while it isn't intended for use in a production environment, the release candidates are a good way to get familiar with the new features. With 2.3, the XOOPS team intends to collapse the two branches of 2.0 and 2.2 into a single release. And while it isn't yet a final product, the development teams is saying that it is "feature ready," meaning just a few bug remain and no additional features will be added beyond what's already in the release candidate.

The good news is that XOOPS 2.3 offers a solid set of new features that will appeal to developers, administrators and end users alike.

The development community should be relieved to hear that it's backward compatible with 2.0 and 2.2, so modules written for those versions will work on 2.3. It's also forward compatible with the next major XOOPS release, 3.0, so that new modules and add-ons written for 2.3 won't have to be scrapped going forward.

Other general back-end enhancements include improved database support, a number of new security features and performance improvements.

On the front end, there's broader support for multiple text editors, so that content creators can use the one they feel most comfortable with. A number of tweaks have also been made to streamline the login process.

XOOPS has a dedicated group of followers for good reason - it's a solid, robust platform with a dedicated, helpful user community. And it looks as if XOOPS 2.3 makes this a good time for the uninitiated to give it a try.