Today, we’re excited to release the first Alpha version of the new Ohanah.

This release marks a huge milestone for Ohanah as we completely re-architected the whole extension from scratch. Many important new features just needed a better architecture to avoid patchworks. During this process we followed our “power in simplicity” motto. Our goal is to set the bar higher by making Ohanah the most powerful event manager for Joomla and the simplest and most easy to use at the same time.

##What happens during the Alpha program?

If you’re already an active customer, you can apply for the alpha program. We already have some of our customers enrolled and we’ll accept more as we move forward.

Many features that will make the new Ohanah are already in place, while many features are still missing as we are currently working on them.

We need your help to iterate on those aspects before the Beta release, and to hammer out any remaining issues on the parts shipped. In this direction, all the feedbacks, suggestions and bug reports will be handled via an in-app messaging system, so that each of our testers can have a direct 1-1 communication channel with our team.

Bare in mind that alpha versions are incomplete releases, not suited for production.

##What’s shipping in Alpha 1?

Since v2, we’ve made an enormous amount of progress. We’ll cover a few of the highlights here.

###Multiple ticket types for each event

• Multiple pricing
• Different sales start and sales end dates for each ticket
• ACL level (each ticket can be set to be buyable only by specific J! user group)
• Visibility (each ticket can be set to be visible only to specific J! user group)
• Min and Max order quantity for each ticket
• Total availability of the tickets.

###Order workflow and ticket widget

• Multiple pricing
• Events now have a responsive ticket widget allowing to order tickets in the fastest and simplest way available online.
• If an event is repeating, people can pick the desired date.
• Tickets powered by QR codes
• Customers have access to their order page with order details, links to tickets and receipt

###Nested Categories

• Event categories now support infinite levels of nesting.

###Joomla 3 UI/UX

• We ditched our past custom user interface to fully embrace how Joomla works, so that anybody knowing the basics of Joomla will be able to use Ohanah in no time, resulting in a much more seamless experience.

###More powerful repeating events options

Now you can easily create events that repeat:

• Daily, 10 times
• Every 2 days, until 17 January, 2016
• Every 3 weeks on Monday and Wednesday, 5 times
• Monthly on day 18, until January 1st, 2016
• Monthly on the third Friday, 3 times

##What’s next?

Below is a list of major areas of improvement and features missing that still need to be addressed during the Alpha program:

• Focus of Alpha2 email notification system
• Focus of Alpha3 payment gateway system
• Focus of Alpha4 frontend views and modules

After Alpha 4 we’ll move into Beta with the goal of making Ohanah completely stable.

##Do we have any ETA?

Nope, although our plan is to have release candidate by the end of spring/start of summer 2015. We value customer feedback and we don’t want to ship anything half baked, so we will work as long as it takes to make things done until we are happy with users installing new Ohanah on their live websites.