This is the first major release for Active Forums in over a year.  I know there has been some confusion between Active Forums 4.2 and 5.0.  I want to clear a few things up and make sure we set some expectations prior to the release. 

Active Forums 4.2 is not a replacement for Active Forums 5.0.  Active Forums 4.2 fixes two major aspects that will not be visible as features.  First and foremost is performance.  Active Forums has always been known for the fastest and most stable forum solution for DotNetNuke.  Active Forums has also been known for the very flexible and granular security options.  With Active Forums 4.0 we implemented a new security model to address a limitation with the number of roles that could be assigned to a security option.  This revised security model proved to have some challenges with larger sites.  After several patches we were able to get the performance back up to normal standards.  However, performance still wasn't quite what we had with Active Forums 3.7 with larger sites.  Active Forums 4.2 takes the best parts of the security model 3.7 and 4.0 to give us the best performance with the most flexibility.  Next we needed to address forum security and how it relates to Groups within Active Social. 

Due to a limitation in DotNetNuke with the number of roles to which a person can belong, we needed Active Forums to see Active Social Groups as a security role.  We also needed Active Forums to see the difference between a Group Admin and a Group Member.  This also meant that the Active Forums Security admin needed to be able to accommodate Roles, Active Social Group Admins, Active Social Group Members and individual users.  In addition, we wanted to provide the flexibility of inheriting features and security for forums belonging to an Active Social Group.   While these changes will not be visibly apparent to most people, they are extremely important to the overall usability and the future capabilities of both products.

Active Forums 5.0 is still at the top of our priority list and I will be posting more about that release shortly.  Full release notes for Active Social 1.5 and Active Forums 4.2 will be available within the next couple days.