We are pleased to announce that CiviCRM 1.7 stable is now available for download.
CiviCRM is the first open source and freely downloadable constituent relationship management solution. CiviCRM is web-based, internationalised, and designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental groups.
New to CiviCRM? Read more at http://civicrm.org/
What's New in 1.7
The big news for 1.7 is CiviEvent - providing integrated online event registration and management for paid and free events. This release also includes a new "Contact Dashboard", which gives constituents a consolidated view of their subscriptions, contributions, event registrations and more.
Other release highlights include:
* Create and save re-usable email templates (with mail-merge tokens)
* CiviContribute plugins for Authorize.net and Google Checkout
* Use customized versions of templates for any screen
* One-click copying for existing Profiles, Contribution Pages and Events
* Restrict access to selected custom data fields and selected profile screens
..You can read the roadmap release summary here:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/CiviCRM+v1.7
... and see a complete listing of ALL (145+) new features, improvements and bug fixes here:
http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=3Dhide&re...
Many of the additions and changes in 1.7 were heavily driven by your feedback and requests - and we hope they solve many more of your CRM requirements....
Improved Documentation
We are also excited to introduce new comprehensive documentation for all 1.7 administrative tasks AND a new, updated and integrated FAQ.
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/
The second phase of the documentation project is underway now - covering End-user tasks - and is scheduled for completion in June.
We will also be posting a downloadable PDF of the documentation on our SourceForge Downloads page shortly. This will allow folks to use and distribute an offline version of the documentation.
Download
You can download the 1.7 stable release here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3D177914
Tarball filenames include the 1.7 label: "v1.7......tgz"
Be sure and select the correct version for your CMS (Drupal or Joomla) and for the version of PHP running on your server
(PHP 4.x or PHP 5.x).
New Installations
If you are installing CiviCRM from scratch, you can use the manual installation instructions linked below.
Drupal Installation (v1.7):
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence//x/xiw
Joomla / Mambo Installations
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence//x/ixI
Upgrading from 1.6
If you are upgrading an existing 1.6 site (working with a copy of the site-of course), we have provided a database upgrade script. Instructions for upgrading are here:
Drupal Upgrade:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence//x/xSw
Joomla / Mambo Upgrade:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence//x/lxs
Getting and Giving Support
You can now ask for and help provide support on our community forums site:
Reporting Issues and Bugs
We look forward to getting your feedback on the release. Any bugs should be reported via our bug tracking system (linked on the bottom of every page). You will need to register as a user - this ensures that we can follow-up with you on your bug reports if necessary.
Critical bugs will be fixed for 1.7. Other bugs and issues will generally be pushed to a later release, as we are on a short release cycle for 1.8.
Demo
The demo sites have are now running v1.7, so you can explore the new features:
http://demo.civicrm.org/
Kudos and Thank-yous
Special thanks to the dedicated folks who contributed to this release by testing the alpha and beta revisions =97 and to everyone in the community who provided new ideas, feedback (especially critical feedback), and patches. The beta revisions of 1.7 were much downloaded and used much more extensively then any prior releases - and we believe this has resulted in a significant quality improvement.
Grateful acknowledgements to John Kenyon who designed and is leading the documentation project, and to Judy Hallman who volunteered to rewrite and migrate all the FAQs from our old site.
Kudos to Marshall Newrock and Ideal Solutions LLC (http://www.idealso.com) for contributing the Authorize.net plugin for CiviContribute. it's enormously helpful for the long term success of the CiviCRM "ecosystem" when consulting partners step up and contribute needed functionality!