CKAN 1.6 released

We're pleased to announce a major new release (v1.6) of CKAN. Version 1.6 delivers a host of improvements including:

• Major improvements to datasets, resources, and groups: the dataset view and edit page have been further simplified and improved, resources now have their own dedicated page, and groups are now searchable.
• User pages have been completely overhauled and now include proper activity streams.
• The QA (quality assurance) extension, which automatically calculates '5 stars of openness' scores and keeps track of broken links.
• A brand new, and much improved, version of the data viewer -- which provides live data previews and visualisations -- using the Open Knowledge Foundation's new Recline Data Explorer.

A full list of changes is below. Thanks to the many users whose requests, suggestions, bug reports, and sometimes volunteer coding time have helped the new version along! To install or upgrade your own CKAN instance, follow the instructions in the Administration Guide.

List of changes in CKAN v1.6

Major changes

• Resources now have their own pages, as well as showing in the Dataset (#1445, #1449)
• Group pages enhanced, including in-group search (#1521)
• User pages enhanced with lists of datasets (#1396) and recent activity (#1515)
• Dataset view page decluttered (#1450)
• Tags not restricted to just letters and dashes (#1453)
• Stats Extension and Storage Extension moved into core CKAN (#1576, #1608)
• Ability to mounting CKAN at a sub-URL (#1401, #1659)
• 5 Stars of Openness ratings show by resources, if ckanext-qa is installed (#1583)
• Recline Data Explorer (for previewing and plotting data) improved and v2 moved into core CKAN (#1602, #1630)

Minor changes

• 'About' page rewritten and easily customisable in the config (#1626)
• Gravatar picture displayed next to My Account link (#1528)
• 'Delete' button for datasets (#1425)
• Relationships API more RESTful, validated and documented (#1695)
• User name displayed when logged in (#1529)
• Database dumps now exclude deleted packages (#1623)
• Dataset/Tag name length now limited to 100 characters in API (#1473)
• 'Status' API call now includes installed extensions (#1488)
• Command-line interface for list/read/deleting datasets (#1499)
• Slug API calls tidied up and documented (#1500)
• Users nagged to add email address if missing from their account (#1413)
• Model and API for Users to become Members of a Group in a certain Capacity (#1531, #1477)
• Extension interface to adjust search queries, indexing and results (#1547, #1738)
• API for changing permissions (#1688)

Bug fixes

• Group deletion didn't work (#1536)
• metadata_created used to return an entirely wrong date (#1546)
• Unicode characters in field-specific API search queries caused exception (since CKAN 1.5) (#1798)
• Sometimes task_status errors weren't being recorded (#1483)
• Registering or Logging in failed silently when already logged in (#1799)
• Deleted packages were browseable by administrators and appeared in dumps (#1283, #1623)
• Facicon was a broken link unless corrected in config file (#1627)
• Dataset search showed last result of each page out of order (#1683)
• 'Simple search' mode showed 0 packages on home page (#1709)
• Occasionally, 'My Account' shows when user is not logged in (#1513)
• Could not change language when on a tag page that had accented characters or dataset creation page (#1783, #1791)
• Editing package via API deleted its relationships (#1786)