The wait have been long, The Development have been longer.
If we made a full change log it would be a complete book to read.
Instead we will give you some reminders of what we promised to deliver and some of the highlights PHPFusion 9 offers.

We put the bar high with some really high goals and ambitions in the Development Plan made 10/09/2013.

I am proud over the fact that basically all the major milestones we had set for PHPFusion 9 in the Development Plan have been more than fulfilled.

Let us list the short version with some of the major goals that we had set to complete in PHPFusion 9, please keep in mind that the following is also a reality for PHPFusion 9 now.

Intuitive design
In PHPFusion 9 our design and Code Standards will be focused to move individual webmasters in to the center of everything.

Ease of use
PHPFusion will be more modular than ever. Core is Core, Infusion is Infusion, Themes as Themes etc.

The Core and Setup
PHPFusion used to have a lot of Infusions pre-installed and integrated to the Core.
You will notice that many of the things that used to be included in the Core will be made to separate Infusions in PHPFusion 9.
With this change we can also offer all new PHPFusion installations a selective setup.
This new setup will allow the Core installation to suit individual site owners specific needs better from the start.

Additionally we will add the following features to the Core :
Hierarchy functions which outputs entire libraries.
SQL functions which outputs all field names.
PDO support for databases.
The Core will also have Form API's that will set new standards in form fields sanitation, SQL management, field management.
Core is responsive and have all Bootstrap features, which allows many powerful jQuery actions to be made available without extra coding.
It will standardize how fields work throughout entire PHPFusion.

Administration Interface
We will introduce a completely new Administration interface with tabs control.
The new Administration interface will be intuitive by nature.

Themes and Theme engine
PHPFusion 9 will have a new Theme engine with tons of options and features.
The new Theme engine will be fully responsive , Modular and Intuitive.
All Infusions will have a default template.
If a Theme have the same template function, the Theme engine will auto switch to the Themes Infusion template.

Security
We will build a new section that we call PHPFusion Defender to increase security and to prevent bots.

Profile
The users Profile will be getting a facelift along with a new body with tons of features.

Registration
Our registration page need to be changed to work with the new security settings and it also need a new fresh layout.

UTF-8
PHPFusion 9 will have a native support for UTF-8 in order to make PHPFusion better for more languages and translations.

SEO
PHPFusion 9 will contain many features that will improve SEO.
The SEO will be both with URL re-write options as well as in definable menu items.

Login
We need to allow logins with e-mail address.

Modularity
PHPFusion 9 aim for Modularity and Intuitiveness.
We will have both the Theme engine and our Infusions ready to receive customized modules.

Backwards compatibility
With PHPFusion 9 we will maintain compatibility for both Infusions and Themes.
Due to the vast amount of enhancements in the system there can be glitches with Infusions and Themes that are not explicitly developed for PHPFusion 9.

To accomplish the above goals and bring us even further we are proud to introduce some highlights in PHPFusion 9

PHPFusion Defender
Automatic form sanitation system for your fields with form token support

PHPFusion Dynamics
Automatic form API & database handler system

Dynamic User Fields
Arrange, connect to 3d party and even categorize your Users Profiles with tabs

Atom Theme Engine
Configurable CSS Overrides for any given Theme for it´s default CSS classes

SEO Engine
Permalinks, pretty URLs and Normalize functions.
A complete Modular system like BBCodes that allows you to easily change and add to the output of how you want your Permalinks

Multilingual Core capabilities
Instanced format with exclusion,inclusion options
You can read more about it under Multilingual Content Explained

Model > View Templating
The MVT have been enabled for most Core content and Core Infusions.
All Themes are able to change individual Core components and Infusions layout with this system

Notification email templating
Enabled for contact, forum notifications and PM emails

Responsiveness
Native Bootstrap is enabled in the system by default

GeoMap
GeoMap is a Country > State selector + City and address fields with 250 Countries and 6832 States covered

DatabaseFactory
Optimized OOP based Database handling that provides support for multiple database connection instances at once with either PDO or MySQL drivers enabled.
Quite a few handy and new functions for database handling have been added such as db_exists, dblastid, dbnextid etc.

UTF-8
With UTF-8 as Default for both for databases and charsets.
A converter script have been provided in the upgrade procedure for this as well.
You can read more about it under UTF-8 Explained

A Blog system
We have included a new Blog system that comes with a Blog Archive Panel and a new Dynamic type of category system

Site links
A new mobile friendly system for the site links have been made.
The new system have support for images and sub menu items

Two new Panel positions
Below header and Above Footer

User Migration Tool
You can now merge user accounts with content

Back-End Theming
A whole new Engine for the Administration to have it´s own Themes

Theme Widgets
Configurable plugins directly for Themes

Venus Admin Theme
One default Administration Theme included

Two Default Themes
Bootstrap Theme
Septenary Theme

On these major systems we have done quite a few extra things to both meet the Development plan and to provide some extra candy and features to the community.

All previous Core content that could work just as good or better as an Infusion have been moved to work as Infusions and all what it means to it´s own folders.
These old Infusions are still listed under content admin since the new Administration is quite flexible.
During the move most of these have been re-coded as per Development Plan.
Any settings from the settings page have been moved to a tab within the Infusion.
The category creation pages have been moved to tabs within the Infusion.
Most Infusions should also have full subcategory support.
Infusions such as Downloads, Forum & the Photogallery have been completely re-written while others have been adjusted to work with a responsive layout, new templates (MVT) and the new Administration.
Settings per page have been removed, all settings per page have been moved to individual Infusion level.
The settings needed by system have been moved to Misc settings.
User selects with drop-down lists could be very heavy with many registered members. This have been solved with an Ajaxed input field that auto search members on keystrokes target by their first,second etc letters.
PHP Code execution directly from stored database codes in Panels & Custom pages have been turned-off by default for better security, you can find the setting under Settings > Security if you want to enable this.
A class autoloader have been made to support the Core.
OpenGraph meta tags for Social networks is supported by most of the system´s Core Infusions.
Content Titles in the add_to_title function used to be site name - content, it is now content - site name for better SEO.
Custom keywords for each content item are now available in Articles, Downloads, News, Blog, Forum, Gallery, Custom Pages.
Wildcard IP and Domain bans is now possible.
Multiple login methods - You can select between user name and email or simply allow both methods.
We removed the Admin password requirement inside various Admin sections with a single login screen to the Administration area.
A new RSS feed´s panel have been included for Articles,Downloads,News,Blog,Forum,Weblinks.
User info panel are now more advanced with avatar, PM status bars.
The Infusions API have been incremented to support multilanguages tables, file removal, link icons and quite simplified. The required numbering have been automated so you just need to put the lines in, Ie ($inf_newtable[] $inf_mlt[] $inf_insertdbrow[] $inf_deldbrow[] $inf_delfiles[]).
Panel management have a new intuitive interface that makes it easier to understand and handle panels, it also tracks un-used panels.
Panels can also be made to only show for certain languages, each panel have it´s own setting for languages to be displayed on.
Custom Pages have been made to work as panels regarding multilingual content, a page can be viewed by one or more languages.
Naturally both Panels and Custom pages are excludable as a whole to work globally for any language in the language settings (Enabled multilanguage tables).
All BBCodes have been updated to support PHP 5.5.
Google re-captcha included.
Entypo - Icon CSS pack included.
Font-Awesome - Icon CSS pack included.
A file called translate_include.php found in includes have been made with functions to translate Language and Countries directly to it´s native language in the language selector, we need everyone´s help to populate this file.

We will need get back to all these things and some more data in the Documentations to come.

Please note that it is quite safe to test PHPFusion 9 as end-user, there will be no major changes in the RC, we will at most add fixes as they are needed.

Download PHPFusion 9 RC 1 here

We have started to gather additional translations : PHPFusion-9-Locale" target="_blank">Download more PHPFusion 9 Locales here

If you experience any issues or if you have any questions ,
please use these forums for Questions and Error reports :

General Questions
Core Issues
Blog Issues
News Issues
Gallery Issues
Forum Issues
Download Issues
Locale Issues
SEO Issues
Other Issues

A full Documentation of everything will be made more carefully when we have finalized the new Main site based on PHPFusion 9 and wrapped the RC to a sharp public 9.0 release.

Merry Christmas to all you Fusioneers!