We deployed a new version of CodePlex last week on Tuesday, January 30th. Some of the features/issues that we deployed include the following:

• Forums/Discussions (56 votes) - The theme (more on this in a separate blog post) for this release was to provide an update to the forums, which have been renamed discussions. This included the ability to edit a post, and to use email as a means to notify you of follow-up replies, and a mechanism to have a discussion thread be only visible to the developers and coordinators.
• Source Code Browsing (55 votes) - The source code tab has been augmented to allow anybody to view the source code directly. This was the single feature that received the largest number of votes on the CodePlex Issue Tracker.
• Sponsored Ads - We now offer project owners the choice of placing sponsored ads on their project pages. Project advertising is provided through Kanoodle BrightAds, and all the proceeds from Kanoodle go entirely to the project owner. Many open source developers work long and hard on their projects and use donations or sponsorships as a way of helping to support their efforts. We wanted to give project owners the ability of having sponsored ads for their project if they choose.
• New Project Creation - Prior to this release the new project creation process required the user to fill out a form and we would create the project. In this release that step is now fully automated. Any registered user can now create a project on CodePlex. All projects are created with a 30 day grace period where the person who created the project can update the wiki, upload the source code, create a release etc. If you have been waiting to create a project I encourage you to click here and get the process started.
• Granular RSS Feeds (21 votes) - In addition to the overall project feed you can now subscribe to an RSS feed for just the wiki, releases, issue tracker, discussions, or source code.

Overall we deployed features and issues that had received 143 votes. I can't tell you how helpful the voting has been in helping us prioritize the work that we do. As I look forward to the next deployment on February 20th we are looking at the highest voted issues as candidates. Click here to see the latest issues.