It has been over 2 months since the previous Beta release, with only a couple of major issues that are resolved in this newest release. With the beginning of the Gamma series, we will begin to see more new features and usability in each release due to a minimal amount of bugs.
Sorting Options
Sorting options have been added to List views, and default sorts can be set at the Area level. You can finally once again order your Area list alphabetically, which was a popular choice in VaultWiki 3 using the now defunct FORUMINDEX BB-Code tag. List previews on node landing pages (such as Area pages) will inherit the default sort of the node.Developer Hooks
Called hook locations in vBulletin, called code events in XenForo, we have completely rewritten VaultWiki's plugin system for Gamma. We introduce the Effect system, which eliminates the separate PHP requires that were done in previous releases in favor of a registry that allows developers to modify only certain variables at certain points during the code execution. Functionally it is similar to XenForo's Code Events, but acts as a wrapper to the forum's own system. Developers familiar with XenForo may not notice much difference, but those familiar with vBulletin will notice more specific variable scoping and enhanced performance of hooks due to an internal cache.Import Changes
The import system has seen a major change with Gamma 1. It is now possible to restart hung imports and re-import a database that has new content with minimal duplication of imported content. Gamma 1 also now has a very stable VaultWiki 3 importer and better conversion of content across installations with different character sets.Encoding
Speaking of character sets, Gamma introduces the ability to change VaultWiki's internal character encoding to one that might better fit your existing content (like ISO-8859-1 in vBulletin 3). While this could already be changed in the config file, doing so would have unexpected consequences and inconsistent behaviors, which are now largely resolved. However, it is still only possible to have one encoding in VaultWiki. This is necessary to maintain a consistent experience regardless of the user's language setting. So VaultWiki's encoding should be set prior to installation to match the default or most common encoding used by your existing site.Release Notes
VaultWiki 4 Gamma 1 should be usable on vBulletin-based production sites.Since this is a Gamma release, we do not recommend installing VaultWiki 4 Gamma 1 on XenForo-based production sites at this time.