Advanced Forum, Advanced Profile Kit, and Author Pane released

Early this morning, just past midnight my time, I put out 1.0 releases of Advanced Forum, Advanced Profile Kit, and Author Pane in both D5 and D6 with the exception of APK D6 which still needs a lot of work. I was trying for a 4/1 release just for fun but they're showing up as 3/31 for me (though one person reported it says 4/1 for them). If you've been using the RCs, there's not much change. I've waited until the bug reports stopped on the RCs before doing the release and I haven't made major changes for a while. If you're one of those folks the usage stats reports on the early alphas, I'm afraid it's going to be a rough upgrade.

These releases were a long time coming. Advanced Forum started out as a modified Flatforum on Coulee Region Online two years ago and has been a module of its own since November of 2007. Advanced Profile Kit started out as a tutorial based on the profiles on Coulee Region Online and has been a module since January of 2008. Author Pane is the new kid on the block but is actually bits of AF & APK pulled out so they could be shared. I've been working on these fairly constantly all that time, slowly adding features and working out the bugs. There is still much work to do on Advanced Forum but it has gathered so many users I felt it was time to make a cutoff point so they would have a solid release.

Which brings us to the future. The D5 line is done as I am leaving D5 behind on all my sites and don't care to work with it anymore. I will continue to support it and provide bug fixes until D7 is released but it's definitely on maintenance only mode for me. D6, however, still has much work to do. Advanced Forum will be getting a 2.x branch soon to file feature requests against and I will start in on them in a month or two (I need a short break). For Advanced Profile Kit, I plan on making the move to Panels 3 and finishing up a more limited feature set to give it a 1.0 release. Then that, too, will get a 2.x branch to start in on some of the plans I have to make it live up to the "advanced" in its name.

So this isn't an end to the long journey but merely a milestone. I'm excited to continue taking Drupal's forums and profiles to the next level and hope you all will keep on the journey with me to make these modules the best they can be.

Thank you all for your continued support. Without users, these modules would not be where they are today.

Michelle