TYPO3 CMS 4.5alpha1 released and we're having a contest!

The first alpha release of TYPO3 4.5 has been announced and we're having a contest for TYPO3 developers (or users). To help celebrate this release, we're giving away a copy of “TYPO3 Extension Development” by Packt Publishing. All you have to do to enter is retweet (@cmscritic) any of our articles from today and let us know you want the book and the first person to do so gets it. Simple as pie (everyone loves pie right?).

On with the announcement:

Today, the TYPO3 community released the first alpha version of TYPO3 4.5. This marks the start of our journey to the first TYPO3 release ever to have long term support (LTS). Release 4.5.0 will be ready by January 2011. This alpha version is a “developer snapshot” to show the progress so far.

What happened so far?

After the kick-off for the 4.5 development during the TYPO3 Developer Days 2010 on July the release team consisting of Ernesto Baschny (release manager) and Steffen Kamper (technical leader) started contacting individuals and teams that were already working on projects that were planned for inclusion in 4.5.

The release team decided to hold weekly meetings together with the TYPO3 product manager (Ben van ‘t Ende) and the core team leaders. These meetings turned out to improve productivity of the team a lot.

Development progress

The release plan for 4.5, the schedule and the planned projects are detailed in the project wiki on forge.

For details about this particular release and the current progress, please read up on:

http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v45-projects/wiki/TYPO3_450alpha1