GD bbPress Toolbox Pro 7.0 opens up a new chapter in the development of this plugin with fully upgraded core code, new features, a new visual interface, performance improvements, updates, tweaks, and fixes.
This new plugin version has new system requirements: WordPress 5.5 or newer, PHP 7.3 or newer. The plugin is tested with PHP 8.0, 8.1, and 8.2. Still, if there are issues with the new PHP versions, please report them through support forums.
GD bbPress Toolbox Pro 7.0 was in development for much longer than anticipated initially, but things kept happening, and it got delayed a few times. But, at the same time, all these delays were highly beneficial, and the plugin is all the better for it. This is the biggest release this plugin has ever had, and it brings some very exciting new features, plenty of important updates and changes, and plenty of bug fixes.
Over the past two months, the plugin has been in the final development stages, tested with multiple Beta and RC releases, and used on the Dev4Press support forums for the past two weeks. If there are any more outstanding bugs, I have not been able to find them, and all reported bugs have been fixed, so version 7.0 is stable enough for release, and I will be ready to fix more stuff as soon as they are reported.
GD bbPress Toolbox Pro 7.0 has 57 features (8 are always active and loaded, the rest you can disable if you don’t need them), with over 550 options you can configure. The plugin has a new admin interface, dashboard, and features panel with filters and search. Many of the features have been improved and expanded with new options. Many new features are included, including support for the Markdown processing, previously available activity and online tracking modules, now available as features, and the new Mark As Read feature.
But the star of this release is the new feature called Booster. Booster is a unique feature for bbPress, with one goal: to make bbPress faster. And it does that by adding new database tables with information for forums, topics, and replies and replacing the default queries using the postmeta table with queries using these new cache tables. To read more about the Booster, check out the article on the GD bbPress Toolbox Pro home page. What is important to know about the Booster right now is: the feature is not yet complete – it is in the Beta status for now; and that using Booster will speed up supported queries from 20 to 50 times! Yes, you read that correctly, all supported queries will be blazingly fast, and the larger the database, the more queries will be even faster compared to classic postmeta-based queries.
With the 7.0 release out now, I plan to release minor updates as soon as any reported bugs are fixed. But there are already plans in place for the 7.1 and 7.2 versions (both currently planned for this year), with a focus on improving features added in 7.0, especially Booster. For now, let me know what you think of the new version, what you think about the new features, and how they can be improved.
To see the list of all the changes in this version, please check out the changelog. If you find any issues with the new version, please, report them in the support forums.
