The wisdom of the commons

Acquia has announced Drupal Commons 1.6, which is said to offer a complete set of social software tools. The new version of Commons allows companies to get all of their social tools in one integrated package .

Enhancements in Version 1.6 include:

• the ability to manage features on a per-group basis to make administration activities more efficient;
• panels, which were previously used for rendering the home page, user profile and group home page have been replaced by context across the entire platform;
• all features within the distribution have been rebuilt, resulting in most of the views, contexts, etc. being renamed and redesigned;
• Commons Invite, which allows site users to invite other people to a site; and
• an upgraded core with numerous security enhancements.

The 1.6 release is available for download now on Acquia's site. Acquia recommends not installing it in a production environment without first evaluating the functionality in pre-production.