Jamroom 6 Beta Kick Off

I’m really excited to announce that after several months of development we are kicking off the open beta for Jamroom 6!

Jamroom 6 is our first MAJOR version change for Jamroom in 3 years - although there have been a ton of new features introduced since Jamroom 5 was initially released, we felt it was time to have some fun!

A LOT of work has gone into Jamroom 6 to make it the best version of Jamroom yet - we’ve been working like mad since Nate joined the team.

What’s New in Jamroom 6

There are dozens and dozens of updates and new features throughout many of the modules - some of the big ones:

- All new “Follow Me” social skin - our most ambitious social skin ever
- Enhanced Timeline with “Quick Share” and all new sharing options
- New “Simple Chat” module makes chat on your site totally seamless
- New HTML Transactional Email support makes all your system notification email look awesome
- New “Profile Pulse” for profile notification counts
- Beefed up Media URL Scanner module now creates “cards” for shared URLs
- New User Birthday module - say happy birthday to your users
- Core DataStore enhancements to make Jamroom fly on larger sites

We have a ton of other smaller updates, tweaks and fixes that are getting rolled out with the Jamroom 6 open beta as well.  Jamroom 6 is a FREE upgrade for everyone - if you are already a Jamroom Hosted or Premium user you'll see upgrades available for your Premium modules as well.

Follow Me - the new super-social skin

Jamroom 6 includes a brand new skin for Jamroom - “Follow Me” - which is the most ambitious skin we’ve ever developed for Jamroom.  Not only does it have an awesome look and design, it showcases the many updates to the Timeline and Media URL Scanner modules.  Think of “Follow Me” as a beefed up Twitter - you can share just about anything, as well as comment, rate and like almost everything as well.  If you run a socially centered site make sure and check it out.

New “Simple Chat” module

We’re also releasing the first beta of the new Simple Chat module.  Simple Chat has been designed to be very light weight and integrate into an existing Jamroom 6 site without ANY changes to templates or code - just turn it on   The design of Simple Chat was inspired by Skype and is super easy to use.  We’ve been using it as our primary team communication channel for over 2 months now, and it’s awesome.

HTML Transaction Email support

The Jamroom 6 Email Support module has been updated with HTML support for transactional emails (i.e. Notifications) - it’s as easy as turning it on in the Mail Support global config.  You can customize the look of your HTML emails by editing a single template - “email_html_notification.tpl” in the User Account module.

Core DataStore enhancements

The Core provided DataStore functions have been enhanced and beefed up.  There is a new database design that should make listings and DataStore searches significantly faster on larger sites.  We’re managing some very large Hosted customers now who are beginning to push the limit on the existing DataStore performance (with 20 million+ rows in some tables) and these new enhancements have been added in to help out.  They also help smaller sites be even snappier as well

How to get your hands on Jamroom 6

We’re not releasing Jamroom 6 into the “normal” Jamroom beta channel - we know there are a ton of sites that are subscribing to our regular beta channel, and we need to make sure at this time that only sites that WANT to be on Jamroom 6 will be on Jamroom 6.  By putting the Jamroom 6 beta in it’s own channel we can be sure no one installs it “by accident”.  While the new 6.0 Core is very stable (as it’s built on the 5.4 Core), we’re hoping to get feedback and more testing done before it goes “live” for everyone.

To check out Jamroom 6, you need to subscribe to the Jamroom 6 Beta Channel:

1) Log in to your Jamroom site as a master admin
2) Go to ACP -> Core -> Marketplace and click on the “Tools” tab
3) Click the “Release Channels” button
4) In the “Channel Invite Code” enter the following Channel Code:

JAMROOM6BETATIME

And save - that will add the new “Jamroom 6 Beta” channel to your marketplace.  Click on “System Updates” and you’ll see the new updates that are available.  After upgrading, make sure and run an integrity check so the new database changes will be applied.

Our goal is to have Jamroom 6 out of beta by the end of October, so if you can help us with testing or feedback it would be super appreciated.

We hope everyone enjoys what they see with Jamroom 6 - as a team it has been a lot of fun finally getting some of these ideas in place.  We’re excited about the direction Jamroom is heading and can’t wait to show you what we have in store for the future.

Have a great one!