A bit over a month after the release of fourth beta release the Drupal development team is pleased to announce the fifth beta release of Drupal 4.7.0! It is available for immediate download.

This beta release is hopefully the final beta release for Drupal 4.7.0 and marks a significant improvement in the Drupal 4.7.0 codebase. Since beta 4, a lot of critical and non-critical bugs have been fixed. All of these changes are detailed in the changelog. However, there are still more bugs to be found, reported, and fixed before a release candidate can be made. The good news is that, with your help, we can release Drupal 4.7.0 RC1 much sooner.

1. Download Drupal 4.7.0 beta 5 and install it on a test platform. You can use the development module to quickly populate an empty database with sample data or you can upgrade an existing Drupal 4.6 database.
2. Get your users to participate on a test site. We've found the best way to discover new bugs is for many people to try many different things with the Drupal site. You may find bugs by looking through the log files as well.
3. Go to the patch queue and review some of the latest patches.
4. Fix bugs! You can learn a lot about the Drupal system by fixing the bugs others find. You can ask questions and work on debugging with other Drupal developers on our IRC channel, #drupal on the irc.freenode.net IRC network. They're busy fixing bugs too, but many, if not most, are willing to give pointers and assist anyone who wants to help!

Release notes

• Important database changes have been made in this release. If you are upgrading, make sure to run the database upgrade script. Instructions for installing or upgrading Drupal can be found in INSTALL.txt or UPGRADE.txt, as well as the handbook.
• As with anything still in development, take precautions with your data before upgrading.