Here it is! The first public beta release for Bolt 3.0 (beta 1)! We've worked long and hard on this release, and we're very happy with how it's turning out. We've refactored most of Bolt's internals to make everything cleaner, more efficient and more flexible than ever. We started working on this release little over a year ago, and over 7,000 commits to our Github repository.

For the next few weeks, we'll be in beta. After that, Bolt 3.0.0 will be released. Right now, we encourage everybody to try out the beta version, and report any breaking issues you might find. For now we'd advise against running this release in production just yet. Unless - of course - you like living on the edge (hashtag yolo).

To install the beta, read the instructions here: http://docs-v3.bolt.cm/master/installation/installation We have switched to a more flexible way of installation. The default installation method no longer puts the .php files in the webroot, but outside of it. Be aware that Bolt 3 requires PHP 5.5.9 or higher.

If you've been following this website, you've already heard about some of the changes in this release, and going forward we will go into detail on more them as we work towards the big 3.0.0 release. Here's a quick list of bullet points with some of the new stuff and improvements:

A new extensible Storage layer

New Extensions structure

We have 'Repeater fields' now

Backend UI refresh

Widgets for both frontend and backend

Refactored sessions

Improved tests / code coverage

Improved Javascipt backend code

New Base-2016 default theme

New documentation

New controller & routing layer

Web asset queues, and easier to keep files out of webroot

Stay tuned for the next couple of weeks, as we'll fix any bugs that come up, as we work towards the stable release of Bolt 3.