Hello everyone,
it is my pleasure to announce the launch of the beta version of BlueSpice 3 [1].
For those who don't know the project yet: BlueSpice is a MediaWiki distribution for companies and organizations. There is a widely used free version, often used by NGOs and non-profit associations.
We would like to invite everyone who is interested to test the beta. For the MediaWiki community, the most exciting point is probably to check our approaches to issues like quality assurance or on-site communication, which might be different for organisational wikis. Our experience with that type of wikis nurtured the development of version 3.
What's new? A lot. Most notably: * we now use VisualEditor and ElasticSearch. Search can be filtered and supports semantic properties. * there's a responsive skin and a redesigned interaction concept involving two navigation columns. You might like the neat preview images for recent changes. * in the discussions try to break new ground. We want to facilitate discussions about articles and make them more traceable. To this end, we have introduced a timeline function and are gaining practical experience. * we introduced a right navigation bar for quality assurance and for power users, with the goal of making the software more comfortable not only for readers, but also for authors.
More changes for BlueSpice 3 can be found out at the Notable Changes list. [2]
Being a beta version, BlueSpice 3 is certainly not (yet) perfect. That's why we are interested in feedback from wiki authors, maintainers and developers. We collect insights directly in our beta test environment on a feedback page.
If you want to become a beta tester: Please apply for edit access to the test environment. We'll send you an account. [3]
For all participants of our beta test we offer two info webinars [4], where we present BlueSpice 3, but also will be answering questions and share experiences. * Tuesday, 31 July 2018 at 8 am UTC (in German) * Thursday, August 2, 2018 at 1 pm UTC (in English)
Happy to hear from you all, and best regards, Markus (mglaser)
[1] https://beta.bluespice.com/ [2] https://beta.bluespice.com/bluespice/index.php/Notable_Changes [3] https://bluespice.com/request-for-a-beta-test-account/ [4] https://bluespice.com/webinar/
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