I’m not sure when I will upgrade. I want to do it now, but I really need to concentrate on planning my lessons for summer session which starts on Monday.

Expression Engine Wrote:
We are pleased to introduce ExpressionEngine 1.5, the Simple Commerce module, the Discussion Forums module 1.3.1, and the Wiki module 1.1.

ExpressionEngine 1.5 is a major release bringing integrated commerce to ExpressionEngine along with an additional 70 features and enhancements.

Protected RSS feeds, a Bulletin Board for the Private Messaging system, and a flexible Member Import Utility are just a few of the powerful new features included with ExpressionEngine 1.5.

The Simple Commerce Module fully integrates the purchasing power of PayPal into your existing ExpressionEngine site with this easy to use, flexible solution.

Customizable email notifications for each product, member group assignment upon purchase, built in encryption, and automated purchase tracking through PayPal’s Instant Payment Notification service give you the power you need to run your own store.

The Simple Commerce Module is included free with ExpressionEngine Personal and Commercial licenses.

The Discussion Forum Module adds user-side theme switching along with a host of minor enhancements. The Forums Module offers two professionally designed forum themes, and a barebones developer theme to help you create your own forum themes.

The Wiki Module now features Namespaces, which allow you to better organize and manage content on your wiki.

For a full list of the new ExpressionEngine 1.5 features and enhancements please read the change log.

For a full list of the new Discussion Forum 1.3.1 features and enhancements please read the change log.

Releases can be obtained from the Download Area.

Changelog
Release Date: August 31, 2006

• Added a Simple Commerce Module.
• Added a new, powerful Template Preference Manager where you can update preferences and member access permissions for multiple template simultaneously.
• Added HTTP Authentication option to Template Access page.  Enabling this feature has some security considerations.  Please consult the documentation before using this feature.
• Added a Bulletin Board to the Private Messaging system and a CP Homepage option to display recent bulletins
• Added a Member Import Utility that imports members from a special XML format, as well as assists in creating an XML file from a delimited text file.
• Added Reverse Relationship ability to Weblog Entries tag
• Added Multiple Category Group support for Weblogs
• Added Namespaces support to the Wiki module and the ability to embed articles within other articles.
• Added a Login as Member option under the Member Administration menu for a member.  Usable by Super Admins only.
• Added ability for members to delete their own accounts (and all associated content).
• Added ability to export a template as an editable file from its Edit Template screen.
• Added new email notification and templates for when a Private Message InBox is full
• Added the ability to Private Message a user from their public profile.  Requires the updating of themes. Please review the Version 1.5 notes for details.
• Added File Properties, File Pre Formatting, and File Post Formatting to the Upload Directory preferences
• Added a new Template Type: XML.  Outputs the page with XML HTTP headers.
• Added the ability to use {related_entries} and {reverse_related_entries} tag pairs to the Search Module’s search results tag.  Usage is identical to the Weblog module.
• Added a Text Direction option for Text and Textarea Custom Fields to make EE more compatible with Right to Left languages
• Added ability to resend Activation Emails, if used on your site, to Pending members when viewing that group in the View Members area of the CP
• Added ability for extensions to have their own built in settings form function, settings_form(), as well as their own built in settings saving function, save_settings().
• Added a Default Entry Title and a URL Title Prefix preference to the Publish Page Customization screen for Weblog Management.
• Added Instructions option for Custom Weblog Fields so that Admins can describe how to fill out a custom field to their author’s on entry submission pages
• Added ability to empty the cached Relationship Entries (Utilities -> Clear Cached Data) and then have the Weblog Module recreate the cached entries when requested
• Added a Template Parser Debugging log that one can turn on in Admin -> Output and Debugging Preferences.  Also, spiffed up the display of the SQL Queries when outputted.
• Added button to Alphabetize Group Order when modifying the template group order
• Added new template variables for some standard date formatting strings.  Please see the User Guide for details on using these new variables.
• Added ability for nested category folder creation in the Image Gallery when creating a new category, allowing more organization of images on the server.
• Added an ‘Exact Match’ checkbox to the CP Homepage’s Member Search
• Added the ability to specify a custom field group, status group, and category group when creating a new weblog
• Added a direct link to view the members of a particular group from the Member Groups area of the CP.
• Added a Group Description to Member Groups
• Added category_group="” parameter to Weblog Entries tag
• Added category_group="” parameter to Weblog Categories tag
• Added show_group="” parameter to the Weblog Entries tag’s {category} variable pair.
• Added Inclusive Category support to the category="” tag.
• Added ability to specify multiple orders in the orderby="” parameter and corresponding supports in the sort="” parameter for the Weblog Entries tag
• Added require_entry="yes” parameter to {exp:weblog:entries} tag.
• Added Sean. variable to Comment Entries tag
• Added {entry_id_path=""} variable to Category Archive tag
• Added new extension hooks:  form_declaration_modify_data, form_declaration_return, cp_display_page_navigation, weblog_entries_tagdata_end
• Added two new variables for Gallery Entries and Gallery Comments: {count} and {total_results}
• Added a flag to the Spellcheck feature to ensure that the necessary abilities are available.  If not, no Spellcheck link will be shown to user.
• Added a new core class, EE_XMLParser, to aid in handling and creating XML data
• Added a new configuration option, $conf[’include_seconds’], that when set to “y” seconds are included on human-readable dates in the Control Panel forms
• Added Member Searching to the Member List part of the member area
• Added DST setting to Moblog module and Metaweblog API entries based on the site’s current daylight savings setting
• Added security option in Control Panel Session and Security Preferences:  XSS filter images
• Added various audio MIME types to the default allowed file types for File Uploading
• Added an indicator to the Template manager to indicate the Template Group for the default index page of the site
• Added an alert message to the Spellcheck when it is not functioning
• Added more detailed Breadcrumb navigation to the Admin section of the Control Panel
• Added error checking for reserved words in weblog custom fields and member custom profile fields.
• Added an alternate syntax for global variables (prefix standard member globals with “logged_in") that is suitable to use in conditionals inside the Weblog Entries tag or other tags that process member information.
• Updated the Weblog Module’s Categories and Category Archive tags so that if the show_empty="no" parameter is set, then entries that are closed or expired are now excluded (for you Kurt).
• Updated the Weblog Module to allow conditionals for all categories in all tags
• Updated the Stats Module to allow conditionals for its standard variables
• Updated the Typography class to have popup links using window.open instead of target="_blank".  Popup links are now disabled by default.
• Updated the automatic url_title creation function for externally create entries (Moblog, APIs, Import Utilities) so that accented characters will be converted to their non-accented counter parts.
• Updated the word wrap function in the email library so that the newline character specified in the class is used.
• Updated the Image Gallery’s view entries page to allow the selecting of more than one entry at once with new options like opening and closing along with deleting of entries.
• Updated the Moblog Module so that Admin notification emails are now sent when a new weblog entry is posted
• Modified the weblog category="” parameter so when excluding categories, entries without categories assigned will not be shown. Added new parameter uncategorized_entries="” to disable this.
• Modified the View Entry page in the Edit section of the Control Panel to order custom field by field order, consistent with other areas of the control panel.
• Modified Private Message Send and Storage limits to be Member Group preferences instead of global settings.
• Modified the Search Module so that searches with no results are stored so that the {exp:search:keywords} can be used on the template specified in the no_result_page="” parameter
• Modified the Multi-Entry Edit ability so that if you have done a search, then after editing your entries you are returned to that search.
• Modified Private Message and Discussion Forum file attachments to use a hashed URL so file attachments have URLs that are difficult (nigh impossible) to guess.
• Modified the Image Gallery and Image Resizing Preferences to allow a hyphen/dash as a separator character along with the underscore.
• Modified the install file so that it puts in a full server path for the captcha directory
• Modified various database fields to accept more data, specifically those related to email caching and template storage.
• Modified the Localization of dates so that templates with the type RSS Page use English only, which is the standard.
• Modified path.php global variable sanitization for increased security.
• Modified the incoming Trackback code to have better character encoding handling
• Modified the Template loop prevention code to be more intelligent and allow multiple embeds of the same template in a page
• Modifed the {wiki:files} function to accept orderby="” and sort="” parameters, and modified the wiki themes to show the 10 most recent file uploads properly on Edit Article pages.
• Modified Install Wizard so that by default error reporting is only visible to logged in SuperAdmins for new sites.
• Modified the {embed=""} tag to allow the use of other variables as embed variables: {embed="site/embed" foo="http://eflgeek.com/index.php/any/thing}/
• Modified the http://eflgeek.com/index.php?css= variable to allow use of quotes, making it more consistent with http://eflgeek.com/index.php/ variable parsing.