jCore 1.0 is taking a "bit" more time than hoped for but because of some security bugs reported in the last days (thanks to High-Tech Bridge Security Research Lab) I would like to push out 1.0pre2 which takes care of these and also includes some fixes/additions that I'm sure you all were looking for.

Great news everyone, jCore can now be installed easily with just one click via Softaculous! If you are wondering what Softaculous is, it is a great Auto Installer having 259+ great scripts and continuously adding more. Softaculous is ideal for Web Hosting companies as these scripts cover most of the uses a customer could ever have with a wide array of Categories so that everyone could find the required script needed to power their Web Site. You can read more about Softaculous or visit the jCore's section directly.

jCore 1.0 is almost here so we would like to give you the pre version of it to test it and report back with as many bugs as possible so we can make sure 1.0 will be as stable as possible.

The pre version contains changes like Real API, CSRF protection, Blowfish passwords, reCaptcha integration, HTML notification emails, Comments at Glance section, Code Profiling using xDebug, new integrated Jaris FLV Player and more.

As we are preparing for the big 1.0 version we want to make sure the jCore code is as secure as possible so we are introducing the first jCore contest today with $1000 in rewards! In this contest we are looking for hacks that can compromise the system, for e.g. accessing a members only area or hacking into someone's account and of course we are rewarding these hacks with real money prices so it may have never been so easy (or hard) to receive some money :)

As the code seems to be doing just fine I had time to create/port over three great templates to jCore from which one is a Sleek Portfolio template with latest poll, Flickr stream and social bookmarking features, and the other two are great magazine templates, Mularonis Magazine and Edge Magazine with featured posts Slideshow, Flickr stream, recent posts/comments, posts calendar, tags cloud, ad places and more. These templates are perfect examples of how customizable jCore is without almost any PHP code needed to be written by only using CSS and Layout Blocks.