Xaneon Extensions is dead, long live OpenSEF! In the coming days, much of the contents of http://www.xaneon.com will move over to http://www.opensef.org, the new home for the successor of our popular Xaneon Extensions SEF add-on for Mambo.

The Xaneon Development Team will stay "in the background" for a while yet to ensure the fledgling project gets off to a good start. We will sponsor the server hosting and other related infrastructure so that the new project team can concentrate on the essential matter: solving the Mambo SEF problem comprehensively once and for all, based on the existing codebase of Xaneon Extensions.

Currently, the OpenSEF team has on board the following individuals:

* Ken McDonald, a.k.a. kenmcd, Project Coordinator & Documentation Writer
* Marko Schmuck, a.k.a. Predator, Developer

In addition, we are still waiting to hear back from several other people who have expressed an interest in contributing to the project. If you would like to get involved in creating the ultimate SEF solution for Mambo, as well as Mambo's yet-to-be-named successor, please get in touch with Ken.

Read the full announcement at:
http://xaneon.com/news/20050826-opensef-project-formed.html
 

The Xaneon Development Team is looking for developers to fork and take over the XE2 project, our popular SEF add-on for Mambo. Interested parties, please get in touch with us via e-mail or the the contact form on our website.

Read the full story:
http://xaneon.com/news/20050822-xe2-development-ending.html

This is the second public beta release of XE2 (a SEF addon for Mambo, based on our previous Alias Manager software), and includes numerous bug fixes (a big thank you to everyone who submitted bug reports!)

The most significant bug fixes include proper friendly URLs for multi-page and static content items, improved phpShop compatibility and correcting an installation error with old MySQL versions.

New features include a setting for enforcing site-wide canonical URLs (using 301 Moved Permanently redirects), HTTP referrer logging on invalid 404 Not Found requests, usability improvements to the administrative interface, better virtual directory emulation, and significantly better debug facilities.

The full changelog is available on MamboForge:
http://mamboforge.net/frs/shownotes.php?release_id=3233

As always, downloads are available on MamboForge and:
http://dev.xaneon.com/downloads/

...and installation & upgrade instructions can be found at:
http://dev.xaneon.com/mambo/extensions/manual/installation.html

XE2b2 is now in active production use on at least dozens of sites that we know of, including a couple fairly high-volume sites, and is starting to stabilize with regards to core functionality. That said, it's still a beta, and users are adviced to familiarize themselves with the list of known issues at:
http://dev.xaneon.com/mambo/extensions/manual/known-issues.html

Internally, the code has been extensively refactored to allow for superbly easy extension of Mambo's and XE's core functionality. XE now provides 3rd-party developers with an easy distribution mechanism to get their code loaded at the very beginning of Mambo's index.php processing, without having to actually modify Mambo's core files. What you can do with this possibility is pretty much limited only by your imagination, as all of XE's own SEF, multilanguage and multisite functionality is provided through the same mechanism.

Also, the entire incoming SEF URL resolving process can be extended, or even wholly replaced, by 3PD and site admins, meaning that anyone who has some basic PHP skills now has the possibility to programmatically customize a Mambo site's URLs to their every whim and desire, and to package and distribute that code as an addon to Xaneon Extensions.

Please report bugs to the project's MamboForge bug tracker.