I needed a theme to test-drive a new theming setup I've been working on, and figured — why build yet another throwaway test theme when the community's been asking for a Bootstrap 5 version of Xcillion for a while now? So that's what I started building. It was meant to be a quick proof of concept. It did not stay a quick proof of concept.

A few weeks (and a lot more scope) later:

Xcillion-B5 is ready for its first real-world test drive.

This is a ground-up rebuild of the classic DNN Xcillion theme, moved from Bootstrap 3 to Bootstrap 5. Not a find-and-replace port — the menu was rebuilt from scratch on Bootstrap's own components, containers were completely revamped, search interface got rebuilt, legacy jQuery UI widgets (admin tabs, the messaging toolbar) were re-mapped onto native Bootstrap styling, Font Awesome was swapped for Bootstrap Icons, and a fair amount of dead weight (unused images, orphaned CSS) got cut along the way. It's been a genuinely substantial rewrite, not a coat of paint. Curious exactly what went in? Here's the full list of merged PRs for this milestone.

That also means: this is a beta, not a finished product. Converting a theme built for Bootstrap 3 brings along some rough edges that don't always show up until you're actually using it on a real site — a few spacing quirks, some legacy px-based sizing still waiting to be normalized, the odd visual inconsistency in less-common layouts. Nothing that should block testing, but expect some follow-up polish releases as things get reported.

What we need from you: install it on a test site, click around, try your actual content and modules, and file an issue for anything that looks or behaves off. Migrating from Xcillion 3? It's designed to run side-by-side with Xcillion-B3 so you can convert pages one at a time.

Thanks for kicking the tires early — it genuinely helps.