ZOO 2.0 Beta released!

A few seconds ago, we have released one of the most anticipated extensions for Joomla: ZOO 2.0 BETA! Check out the festive teaser on the ZOO website. The ZOO 2.0 BETA is available only for members who purchased ZOO 1.0 PRO. If so you can go straight to the download section in the member area and get your hands on our new baby! As finish of our blog post series here is a list of all features of the new ZOO 2.0. There is so much cool stuff in ZOO 2.0 that there might be some features missing in this list, but we think we got all the major ones!

Application Engine

• Create your own apps
• Create unlimited app instances
• Great looking tab menu to browse the different app instances
• Build your own custom content types
• Large collection of elements to compose your types
• Extendible app parameters
• Content parameters to extend frontpage and categories with content fields
• Content parameters support text, textarea, checkbox, select, radio and image parameters
• Install, uninstall and export apps
• Import and export content from ZOO 2.0, ZOO 1.0 and Joomla
• Frontpage, category, item, comment and tag manager
• Item assignment to multiple categories
• Categories with a multi-level hierarchy and unlimited depth
• Tag system with "Autocompleter" and "Quick edit" functionality
• Sorting your categories using Drag ‘n Drop
• Joomla plugins are working with all textareas used in ZOO 2.0
• Automatically generated slugs which can be quick edited
• Item priority to support a much more flexible item ordering

Template Engine

• Layouts with element positions to arrange content using Drag 'n Drop
• Pre-build layouts for the items like full and teaser layouts
• Search layout to arrange content shown in the search results
• RSS layout to arrange content shown in the RSS feed
• Templates to render elements wrapped with custom HTML code (similar to Joomla modules)
• Global template parameters, which can be adjusted for each category or item
• Global template parameters support any form elements like selectboxes or radio buttons
• Image caching and resizing by width and height
• Templates for the frontpage, categories, alpha index, tag and item view
• Alpha index support for UTF-8 characters
• Alpha index shows categories and items

Elements

• Core elements for item name, author, hits, modification date, creation date, categories and tags
• Checkbox element to define your own checkboxes
• Date element has an easy date picker and is repeatable
• E-Mail element which cloakes emails and is repeatable
• Link element supports a custom title, lightboxes and is repeatable
• Radio element to define your own radio buttons
• Select element supports single and multi selection
• Text element to define a simple input field which is repeatable
• Textarea element uses the Joomla editor, supports Joomla plugins and is repeatable
• Download element which supports a download limit and different modes like direct, attachment and protected
• Gallery element supports all features of the YOOgallery module.
• Image element supports auto resizing, lightboxes and is linkable
• Video element supports Flash, Quicktime, YouTube, Vimeo and many more
• Country element offers a selectbox with all countries of the world
• Joomla module element allows displaying Joomla modules on specific item pages
• Related categories element shows links to related categories
• Related item element makes it possible to link to other items and to show their image and more
• Rating element displays a voting with stars
• Social bookmarks element displays links for Twitter, Facebook, Google and to recommend this item via email
• Google Maps element supports all features of the YOOmaps module.
• Addthis, Disqus, Flickr and IntenseDebate element

Comment System

• Native comments with a very nice user interface
• Supports approval by default, not by default or is only required once
• Spam folder and support for spam preventing services (Akismet and Mollom)
• Black list which checks content, name, URL, e-mail and IP
• Automatic linking of URLs and email addresses in comments
• Nested comments to a maximum depth of 5
• Supports Gravatar service to provide avatars
• Facebook and Twitter Connect
• Quick editing of comments
• Great looking default theme which highlights author comments

Addons

• Item module to display any kind of items from an app
• The item module has its own layout to place elements using Drag ‘n Drop
• A search plugin, so that items will appear in the Joomla search
• Uses a natural language search that is focused on usability by spoken languages
• Search index which makes searching faster on large numbers of items
• Tag module to display a tag cloud
• Comments module to display the latest comments of your app

Note: ZOO 2.0 requires PHP 5.2+ and MySQL 5.0.4+.

Update: Why can't I download the BETA?

The ZOO 2.0 BETA is exclusively available for members who supported us and the ZOO development by purchasing ZOO 1.0 PRO. We really appreciate their trust in our software. This is why we already re-activated and extended all ZOO memberships till 1. June. This should not be a big surprise because we stated this in our ZOO 2.0 announcement 21 days ago (See headline "We care about our members"). If you want to support us too, just purchase the PRO version, and you will have immediate access to the ZOO 2.0 BETA! You will also get the new app bundle. Read more about it in the next paragraph!

What's the difference between BETA and STABLE and new app bundle?

The BETA version is exclusively available for members and contains 3 apps: the blog, the download archive and the product catalog. The STABLE version will be free and will only contain the blog app. We will also release an app bundle with new sophisticated apps for ZOO 2.0. It will include the download archive and the product catalog but also a lot more new apps. So once the STABLE version is release you can download it for free and start your new blog. At the same time you can purchase the new app bundle. All members who already purchased ZOO 1.0 PRO will get the new app bundle! Basically the app bundle will replace the current ZOO PRO edition.