Simplenews release candidate 1

It took a while, but finally today I released the first simplenews release candidate! And I'm proud of it. It was on February 3rd 2008 that I committed the first Drupal 6 port of Simplenews module. I was surprised how quickly the conversion from Drupal 5 went. Only 40 hours for a basic conversion ;) But basic was not enough and I got my hands dirty, very dirty. The mailing back-end is now fully rewritten to make it even more reliable and scalable than simplenews ever was. As non English site builder I also wanted Simplenews to be fully i18n compatible, and now it is. Also usability was on my list: I simplified forms, added permissions and even removed some rarely used features. Last but not least I wanted simplenews to work well with other modules: CCK, Views, Actions and Triggers. Now, approx 180 hours and 140 commits later the module is good enough to be released.

For many of the users which already use simlenews 6.x the module was already good enough. End 2008 more than 3000 sites have simplenews 6.x installed. I am glad that all these users have enough confidence to start using the module while still under development. During developing I am very aware of the users depending on the module and the problems it may cause when making critical errors. Therefore it is rewarding to read in the issue queue how a user express his confidence in the module. With the RC1 out I like to thank all those who use the module, all those who reported their problems and did not stop posting until they found the cause (or until I submitted a patch) and special thanks to those who filed patches. Every little help counts!