As we move closer to the first beta release of MyBB 1.8 the MyBB Team have been hard at work streamlining some of our behind-the-scenes services and workflows.

Changes to Development

A while ago we mentioned moving to a GitFlow workflow over at our GitHub repository. If you’re interested in helping us develop everyone’s favourite forum software take a look at our new Development Workflow and how you can get involved.

MyBB 1.6.x will now start using this workflow. MyBB 1.8.x will start using this when it reaches its first beta phase.

Timed Releases

With our new workflow the master branch in our repository should always be production ready. While only the latest release, available from MyBB.com, is supported on our support forums this allows us to provide set dates for bug fixes and maintenance releases.

You should see new MyBB releases every two months from January 2014 regardless of how many issues are resolved. So you can expect 1.6.13 in March ‘14, 1.6.14 in May ’14 and so on. There is no limit to how many versions we’ll have in the 1.6.x series until its EOL date.

Security releases remain unaffected and patches/releases are created whenever high risk vulnerabilities are reported and fixed.

Reporting Bugs and Issues in MyBB 1.x

One of the last remaining legacies of MyBB’s development cycles, Redmine, is now officially retired and no new members or issues can be created.

Instead, you can now report bugs and issues you find in MyBB in two ways: via the Community Forums (in the 1.6 Bugs & Issues forum or the 1.8 Bugs & Issues forum) or directly at GitHub.

In the near future we’ll be moving all existing open issues to GitHub and archiving Redmine. At the moment existing users there can still comment and act on issues.

Becoming a Contributor

The MyBB Team will also be moving development discussions about the core into the open development sections on our Community Forums. To be able to start new threads and reply to these discussions you need to join our new Contributor group.

More details can be found in the Joining the Contributor Group thread.

Moving 1.8 to Beta

Finally, we’re almost there. After almost 2 long years the MyBB Team have been busy finishing up the last remaining roadmap items for the first beta phase of MyBB 1.8.

Even at this exciting (and long overdue) stage there are still many tasks left to complete before you should be using 1.8 on your live forum.

Why not download a copy of MyBB 1.7 today and give it a test drive on your localhost – and let us know what you think!