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We are proud to announce the first stable release of the 1.17 series.

Selected changes since MediaWiki 1.16 that may be of interest:

* A new installer has been introduced. It has a wizard-style interface which is translated into many languages. Many shortcomings in the old installer were addressed with this rewrite. Note that it is no longer required for the config directory to be made writable by the webserver. Instead the generated LocalSettings.php file is offered as a download, which you must then upload to the wiki's base directory.

* ResourceLoader, a new framework for delivering client-side resources such as JavaScript and CSS, has been introduced. These resources are now delivered through the new entry point script "load.php", instead of as static files served directly by the web server. This allows minification, compression and client-side caching to be used more effectively, which should provide a net performance improvement for most users.

* Category sorting has been improved. * Sorting is now case insensitive. * Sub-categories, pages and files can now be paged separately. * When several pages are given the same sort key, they sort by their names instead of randomly.

* The lowest supported version of PHP is now 5.2.3. If necessary, please upgrade PHP prior to upgrading MediaWiki.

* Oracle Database support has been improved, and is now ready for beta testing. If you work in an environment where Oracle is readily available, and you can't get access to MySQL, this may be a useful alternative for you. Please try it out and let us know if it works for you. Oracle support is not yet recommended for use in production.

For more information about what's new in the MediaWiki 1.17 branch, see: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.17

Frequently asked questions about upgrading: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:FAQ#Upgrading

Changes since 1.17.0rc1: * Fixed syntax error in generated LocalSettings.php when a non-default user rights profile is chosen. * (bug 29399) Fixed PostgreSQL installation when the DB user for installation is the same as the one for web access. * (bug 29233) Fixed failover for DB slave servers. When a DB slave went down, an error was immediately shown to the user, instead of trying another slave. Was broken since 1.17 beta 1. * (bug 29278) Fixed PHP fatal error when attempting to add text to a page via a redirect. * (bug 29408) Fixed uploads of files with MIME types that aren't detected by MediaWiki.

Full release notes: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.17

********************************************************************** Download: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.17/mediawiki-1.17.0.tar.gz

Patch to previous version (1.17.0rc1): http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.17/mediawiki-1.17.0.patch.gz

GPG signatures: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.17/mediawiki-1.17.0.tar.gz.sig http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.17/mediawiki-1.17.0.patch.gz.sig

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