I am posting this from the ferry taking us back to the mainland, after a very awesome second edition of Boltcamp. This weekend we've had our code-sprint, on the lovely island of Vlieland. The goal was to have fun, and to work on the final blocking issues for Bolt 2.0. We were successful in both areas: We had a blast, and we've been able to resolve a lot of the open issues in Github.

That's why we're able to proudly present to you the first real beta version of Bolt 2.0. As mentioned, a lot of work was done this weekend, both by those of us on Vlieland as well as numerous people joining in on the fun remotely. In total, about 170 commits were made to the main repository, as well as quite a few to the other repositories for the documentation and various extensions and themes.

The main improvements of this version are:

We now have our own extensions marketplace. You can install extensions and themes right from the Bolt backend, and keep them updated as well. There are alread over 50 extensions and themes on the marketplace to use in your websites.

We have a new, fully responsive backend, that looks pretty slick if you ask us. We've spent a lot of time to make sure it works smoothly, and that it allows editors to do their jobs efficiently and pleasantly.

We've refactored most of the code. It's better structured and organised than ever. The current version is well-tested using Travis, for continuous integration. It runs smoothly on all PHP versions between 5.3.3 and the latest 5.6.

... and a ton more has been done in the mean time: a lot of new minor features, tweaks and improvements were made to almost any part of Bolt.

Here are some screenshots, for you to fawn over: Gallery (The Wi-fi on the ferry is a bit flakey, so I just put them on Imgur)

To install this version from scratch, follow the instructions on the updated installation page in the documentation, as can be found here: Installing Bolt. To upgrade an existing site, see Updating.

Standard beta-release disclaimers apply: Even though we're fairly certain that this release is pretty stable, we would strongly advise you not to use this release for production websites. Also, you probably shouldn't update current production websites to this version just yet.

So, what's next you ask? In the next few weeks we'll be focusing on fixing any bugs and issues that might pop up in this release. We're probably going to push out a few more releases, as we go along. At the same time, we're working on improving the documentation for Bolt. You can see the current docs for version 2.0 here, but we will be expanding on them, and we'll be writing a quickstart guide and reference materials. For example: we're working on a nifty cheat sheet, which you can already see here.

Last but not least, we're also working on a brand new website for Bolt, which will be launched at the same time as Bolt 2.0. It'll focus on the awesome new features and interface of the new version.