The XOOPS Development Team is pleased to announce the release of XOOPS 2.3.0 RC. The objective of XOOPS 2.3 releases is to merge the two existent branches of 2.0 and 2.2 and to build a bridge towards our next generation of system XOOPS 3.0. With XOOPS 2.3 releases, users will be able to learn some of new features that will be available in XOOPS 3.0, while developers can understand better the direction of XOOPS development, and designers can learn what features will be supported in the future. Both backward and forward compatibility will be guaranteed as much as possible. Modules written for 2.0.* and 2.2.* will work with 2.3; applications developed for 2.3 will be compatible with XOOPS 3.0 automatically. Developers are encouraged to write their application modules on XOOPS 2.3 so they can incorporate some of the new features and ensure easy migration to XOOPS 3.0. The RC release is freezing the key features for this release with some minor improvements introduced in the specific release.