Version 6.2 Released!

Version 6.2 of both ProjectForum and CourseForum have been released. They are available for download from our website, and our hosting servers have been updated.

The main emphasis in this version has been the WYSIWYG wiki editor, which has had significant enhancements made to it. As always, full details can be found in the change log.

New Beta - 6.2b2

We've made a second beta release available; it contains several additional bug fixes to the editor, as detailed on the beta page.

New beta: richtext editor improvements

We've made available beta 1 of version 6.2 for both ProjectForum and CourseForum.

As you'll see from the beta page, this focuses almost entirely on the richtext a.k.a. WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that was introduced in version 6.0. As you may know, the editor is based on an open source HTML editing framework called TinyMCE. Not too long ago, TinyMCE went through a major overhaul, which greatly improved it. Unfortunately, it also required a major change in how we used TinyMCE within ProjectForum.

But as a result of that plus many additional changes we made, the richtext editor you'll find in 6.2 should eliminate many of the bumps that people have found in the current versions.

Please download and give the new beta a try, and let us know how the new editor works for you. We're especially interested in feedback from people using different web browsers, and those who've run into troubles with the previous editor.

Why a workgroup wiki?

We've talked before about how ProjectForum and CourseForum are examples of what we call "workgroup" wiki software. So unlike something like Wikipedia where you have the whole world involved, it's more geared for smaller groups collaborating. Usually it's several different - but sometimes overlapping - groups using the same ProjectForum server, in separate workspaces or forums. By focusing on that usage pattern, the feature set and design can be optimized to fit those kind of work patterns.

The other aspect of workgroups is that most don't have the budget and/or IT resources (or time!) to deal with installing or learning expensive, complex software. So we've made ProjectForum affordable and very easy to install without any complex infrastructure or IT expertise needed.

If you've been following some of the other wiki vendors, you'll notice an increasing emphasis on so-called "enterprise" features. For software companies, "enterprise" is where the big money is; large licenses sold to bigger companies by highly paid salespeople for 5-6 digit fees (plus support and installation and training and consulting contracts to match).

And do you think if you're charging that much money the product can be up and running smoothly in a minute or two? Not a chance. Complex infrastructure needs, elaborate administration setup, and a multitude of integration points help "justify" the fees.

Not in that class? Ask yourself if the enterprise products are really what you need.

(We have an enterprise license for ProjectForum, but it's not that much different than the regular license, and just as easy to install and use. The main difference is a more fine-grained access control model that more closely matches usage patterns for some larger organizations than our regular license).

Who uses ProjectForum?

We often get asked about who is using ProjectForum. There is a page on our website that provides some usage examples.

The reality is that it really is all over the map. We've got solo users and large companies, small-medium businesses in a range of industries, non-profit and community groups, industry and academic research teams, and many more. Sometimes the whole company from the CEO on down uses it, sometime it's one or two departments, and sometimes it's been smuggled in the backdoor by a few people sick of the officially mandated and sanctioned collaboration solution.

So there's no typical user. As a fairly general communications technology, that's not surprising (why doesn't anyone ask who is the typical telephone user?). While some people want to see more rigid structure out of the box, most people seem to find that in the long run an easy to understand and highly tailorable workspace helps support their work and frustrates them less.