If you develop modules for PUArcade, here are a few suggestions so that you maintain compatibility with all the built in PUArcade features.

1. Permissions. Permissions are set on a folder level. Please be sure that your module checks for a users permissions before showing games. You don't want your module displaying games that a user doesn't have rights to access.

2. Publishing. Games, folders, contests, and scores can be published, or unpublished. Please be sure that your module checks for publishing status before displaying any of these things. You don't want your module to show unpublished games, right?

3. Leaderboard. PUArcade includes a function to get the leaderboard for use in modules. Please use this function. It allows you to take advantage of leaderboard caching, including paying attention to the cache refresh interval set in configuration. It also makes sure that your module will have the same results as the component.

4. Functions. Remember that all internal functions of PUArcade are likely to change. Unless we specifically indicate that a function is public (like the leaderboard one above) you should assume that the function could change at any time. This would, of course, break your module.

5. Links. Use SEF friendly URLS (sefreltoabs). Include a gameid, folderid, etc in every link. This makes SEF much more friendly.

If you have any questions about how exactly to do these things, post a question over in the 3rd party forums . 

We are pleased to announce the GA release of PUArcade 2.3.  This new version adds a lot of great features and stability to the arcade, and I believe firmly cements PUArcade as the best Joomla arcade component available. 

We are really excited about some of the new features, and we hope that the community leverages them to their fullest. 

• One of the most major updates is to the arcade layout.  It is now entirely CSS controlled, and you have the ability to change CSS templates.  The arcade ships with 5 different templates.  We really hope to see community members putting together their own templates soon.
• A relatively simple update with a lot of potential is the new plugin architecture.  Integration with outside components is now largely done through a trigger based plugin architecture.  Shoutboxes, PM components, and who knows what else will leverage these triggers to provide much better integration.  You can check out the community downloads area for some examples of these.  If you are wondering where your shoutbox integration option went from the back end...well, its in a plugin now.  You have to grab it from the link above.
• We exposed some methods for community developers to use against the leaderboard.  This should stop developers from needing to do their own queries to get leaderboard data, and allow them to leverage the built-in leaderboard caching.  We hope the community will start to use it!

It has been WAY too long since the last release, but there is a lot of new functionality packed into this one.  It is our firm intention to start providing more frequent, but smaller, updates to get functionality out quicker.  Special thanks go to jg_balcombe for some cool code contributions.  Thanks also go to all of our subscribers.  Without these subscribers, this release would not have happened, and PUArcade as a whole would be much less powerful.

As always, please post your questions or support issues in the forums .