Open beta testing invitation

[All Colours Sam]

Hello dear users!

As you might or might not know, beta testing and testing in general in SMF has always been somewhat closed to the public eye. We want to change that.

We are extending an open invitation to test the different install, upgrade, and patches packages for new SMF releases. The more eyes and hands we have working on testing the packages, the better. Your help with testing will be very valuable and appreciated as we work toward the ultimate goal of delivering reliable releases for the community.

What are we looking for?

• People with dedicated testing environments or the capability to test on private servers.
• People with the ability to understand and troubleshoot issues with developer assistance.

Please be aware that we don't recommend installing beta packages on a production forum, since there might be still issues with them. For this reason and to discourage those users who would just want to have early access, we have created a joinable (curated) group and a semi-private board for the Beta Testing team. Access to the beta packages will be available through that board. Please feel free to request access, and please let us give you a big thank you in advance for your help!

You can request to join the group from your profile or via: https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?action=profile;area=groupmembership

[Antechinus]

What are we looking for?

- People with dedicated testing environments or the capability to test on private servers.
- Users with PHP 7.4 servers.
- Users with non-English character sets, e.g., cyrillic, greek, CJK

Just to clarify: are you only looking for testers who meet all three of those criteria? IOW, are non-English character sets a central requirement?

[shawnb61]

No, not a hard requirement.  Something we need proper coverage for, though. 

[GigaWatt]

- Users with non-English character sets, e.g., cyrillic, greek, CJK

Meeh... PHP 7.3, but my forum is in Cyrillic, so I applied .

[shawnb61]

Bumping this.  Those interested in participating in beta tests before every release can simply request to join as indicated above.