Harajuju is one of the more interesting MyBB projects, because of the extensive ways it has been customized such as the excellent usage of the XThreads system and the wonderful theme. Some of the features and looks of Harajuju can be seen below:

We wanted to talk to brad-t – the prolific MyBB community manager and UX expert who previously worked on the World Beyblade Organization, about how he uses MyBB and what makes his ethos unique.

How did you first get involved in forums?

I’ve been running my own websites since I was about 12 years old, when I started an online RPG on GeoCities. I got really interested in Beyblade around 13 years old, and I started looking for forums to join and discuss it.

None of them were any good. So I decided to start my own – Off the Chain, which ran phpBB2. I ran that site from 2003 until 2005, when I closed it due to a lack of interest.

A few years went by, and I was wondering how my old Beyblade friends were doing … there weren’t any communities for Beyblade around anymore, so I decided to start again. I created Beywiki – the Beyblade encyclopedia – in 2007 in order to bring everyone back together. I chose MyBB for this project, though I sadly can’t remember how I discovered it. Shortly after that, it was announced Beyblade would resume production again, and we transitioned to become the World Beyblade Organization. After a few years I was offered a job at a toy company and resigned due to a conflict of interest, but those guys are still going strong.

I decided I wanted to start a community about Japanese fashion in 2010, and chose MyBB because I was familiar with it and knew that I could customize it a lot. And well, here we are now.

Given the excellent design of Harajuju, your Japanese fashion forum, do you have any background in web design?

I don’t. I’m entirely self taught. It’s just something I’ve developed from running many websites, I guess. I’m a hobbyist at best; I think I can give valuable design feedback, but I’m under no impression that I’m a professional. I have a big interest in UI and UX and have done a small amount of real work in those areas.

What sites do you visit daily? Do you subscribe to any web development/design type blogs?

I find reading about app design interesting, and I think there’s a lot of lessons that can be taken and adapted for web design. Some tech blogs I read include: Daring Fireball, Marco.org, LittleBigDetails, iOS.tumblr.com.

What do you like about MyBB that puts it above other forum software?

Its extensibility. It’s very easy to bend MyBB to your will, so to speak. There are some MyBB plugins that are completely indispensable to me, such as xThreads and Template Conditionals. I’m not sure that I would’ve been able to accomplish things like Haralooks and the Brand Directory with another forum software … at the least, it would’ve been much more work.

If you could add one thing to MyBB, what would it be?

There are a lot of things, frankly. If I had to pick one thing, it would be a revamped conversations feature similar to Facebook’s. Threaded messaging is not optional anymore. I’m hopeful that we’ll see a plugin to add this functionality in the near future, but I had sincerely hoped to see it in 1.8. C’est la vie.

What do you think the next big trend in forums will be?

It’s hard to say. Forums themselves are definitely on the decline in terms of both relevance and popularity as conversations shift to giant platforms like Facebook. If they want to regain any foothold outside of techy niches, they need to become simpler. They need to shed extraneous features and checkboxes and menus. And just hiding that complexity is not enough – things really need to be simpler.

I know XenForo is a big deal right now, and they’ve done a lot well, but I still think they are adhering to forum standards too rigidly. Discourse is a really interesting development, but its interface is pretty indecipherable in a lot of ways. It feels like a product made for the technologically inclined.

We should be designing forums in a world where nobody knows what the hell a “forum” is.

Any advice for people aspiring to make forums as thriving as yours?

Haha, well, Harajuju is a fairly quiet project by design right now. I’ve been quietly tuning things under the hood; I hope to generate a lot more activity over the next year.

I’ve posted this maybe a million times, but it’s important to fill a need other than your own. A lot of people create forums because they want to run a forum. That’s just not enough – your desire has to be not one of control, but one of invitation. I created Harajuju because I wanted to create a community space for people who love Japanese fashion and who were sick of the shallow and petty conversations in other spaces. I created Off the Chain because there were no good Beyblade communities. I founded the World Beyblade Organization because sanctioned Beyblade play outside of Asia was essentially non-existent.

Of course, I get a thrill from running these communities; it’s great to create something and to own it. But it’s not just my needs I’m serving. My needs take a backseat to the needs of my community’s members.

Anything else you’d like to say?

MyBB’s power is in its flexibility. Don’t stop with a few CSS changes and a list of forums. Think about what you can do with the powerful templating options and the huge library of existing plugins out there. Work with developers to create new ones – or if you can develop, create your own.

MyBB is at a tumultuous place in its lifespan. Interest in forums among the general populace of internet users is on the downswing and competition in the space is heating up. MyBB 1.8 is going to be the last version of the 1.x series and the last version that’s compatible with the existing plugins out there today. So we all need to work hard to maximize its potential.

This release is to ensure that users of the MyBB Merge System are able to upgrade and continue to use MyBB 1.6.10.

If you are using or looking to upgrade to MyBB 1.6.10 it is imperative you use this version of the Merge System.

Development Updates

The MyBB Team are working hard to create and update modules for the MyBB Merge System. More information is coming soon!

1.8 is a huge leap forward for the 1.x series. It will introduce some powerful new features while also providing a stable forum solution for your community for years to come. It will also allow us, the MyBB Group, to focus on the next generation of our software – the anticipated 2.x series.

Status

Due to the extended development and testing phase of 1.6.10, as well as the usual lull in activity due to workload, exams and holidays, MyBB 1.8 isn’t as far along its roadmap as we would like. Naturally we are disappointed but we remain committed to creating and providing one of the most advanced free forum software packages available.

Further to this we are, as a group, undergoing huge changes to how we work to help make releases quicker. These past 12 months has seen an insane amount of work completed by our team, much of which is behind-the-scenes, and we hope to bring news of this to you very soon.

With updates in mind, you can now find the MyBB 1.8 Roadmap on our community forums. This thread will be kept up to date with the latest news, features and bug fixes that are happening during its development.

Release Date

As always, MyBB 1.8 will be released when we feel it is ready. We opened our GitHub project to the public so that anyone – not just the MyBB Team – can help with development of the 1.x series. Even if you can’t code, anyone can download both branches (1.6 & 1.8) to help test bugs and offer suggestions for improvements. Alongside our roadmap you can keep up to date with the project and see what is coming next.

1.8 is not feature locked at this moment in time. However, we don’t plan on introducing further major overhauls to help avoid plugin and theme incompatibilities.

Joining the Team

There has never been a more exciting time in MyBB’s history; with 1.6 ready for new technologies, 1.8 on the way and starting 2.x soon (which is looking absolutely awesome) 2013 is already proving to be a busy year. If you feel you have got what it takes to be a dedicated volunteer for the project we’d love to have you on the team!

We’re currently looking for developers for the 1.x series, SQA team members and members for our new Resources Team – who will be focused on managing our community services. If you are interested in any of these PM a staff member, post an application in our Private Inquiries forum or send us an email.

What’s added/changed in this version?

This release fixes 7 vulnerabilities and over 95 reported issues causing incorrect functionality of MyBB. Please be aware that to be able to provide easy to manage updates not all issues have been fixed in this version.

A considerable amount of effort has been put in to MyBB 1.6.10 to fix a myraid of issues with PHP 5.4. This is the main reason why the release has been delayed until now. MyBB 1.6.10 should now be compatible with PHP 5.4 hosts.

• Vulnerabilities:
  • Low Risk: Potential SQL Injection when optimizing the database – reported by Jakub Galczyk
  • Low Risk: Potential SQL Injection when creating the database backups – reported by StefanT
  • Low Risk: Potential XSS vulnerability in theme name – reported by pandaa
  • Low Risk: Improper permission checks for forums where you can only see your own threads – reported by Jordan Mussi and StefanT
  • Non Critical: XSS vulnerability on debug page – reported by 1llusion
  • Non Critical: Improper input validation in modcp.php – reported by 1llusion
  • Non Critical: Improper input validation in calendar.php – reported by Jakub Galczyk
• Fixed issues in 1.6.10
• Unfixed issues

Please view the 1.6.10 changes on the Docs site for more information about the changes in this version.

Upgrading from 1.6.9 and Other Versions

Before performing any upgrade please remember to backup your forum’s files and database and store them safely. If you have edited core files, including language files, please make sure you make a changelog for these changes so you can make them again (if necessary) once the upgrade is complete.

To upgrade, follow the Upgrading process. The upgrade script is required. There are changes to 12 language files. 25 templates have been changed or added.

If you’re using MyBB 1.6.9

• Download and use the Changed Files Package (MD5: e1e3d8db4a8ca06c527ff5692cf2ca24)
• Follow the Docs Upgrading Instructions

If you’re using MyBB 1.6.8 or lower

• Download and use thefull 1.6.10 Release Package (MD5: 8243d6788a92b7ffa921f131f4dcc84f)
• Follow the Docs Upgrading Instructions

Reporting MyBB security vulnerabilities

If you think you’ve found a vulnerability in MyBB, we advise you not to publicly post it on these forums or publicly release information about it elsewhere until we’ve had time to prepare and release a patch.

As always, you can send through security related messages on the MyBB website from the Contact Us page or in our Private Inquiries forum – where you can start a new thread that only you and the MyBB Team can see.

Thanks,

MyBB Team

Today we are pleased to announce that our main repository, where the 1.x series is developed, is now available to the public!

Visit the MyBB repository on GitHub →

The Basics

The mybb repository consists of 3 main branches: Master, Stable and Feature. These branches contain a different set of code depending on the name of the branch.

At the moment of writing this post:

• Master contains code that has been (or is to be) publically released (currently 1.6.9)
• Stable contains work and bug fixes for the next minor version of MyBB (so 1.6.10, 1.6.11 etc)
• Feature contains all our work on the next feature version of MyBB – 1.8

Please note that, although all this work is available to you, MyBB only officially supports the latest release. Stable and Feature code may contain partially-committed features which are broken, incomplete or may never make it to public release and for these reasons we do not recommend using either of these branches on your own forums.

They will NOT be supported by the Support Team.

For Developers

Access to our repository provides plugin and theme developers the opportunity to work with the latest code. We hope members of our community, and those interested in our project, become more closely involved with MyBB’s development.

Cutting edge development is designed for advanced users only. While we will try and support you with your work MyBB can’t provide support for Git or GitHub. We’re working on improving our documentation about development.

About MyBB 1.8 Alpha

With the opening of our repository MyBB 1.8 is now publically available via the Feature branch. Please note that this only contains a handful of optimizations, features and changes that we are going to implement into this series.

Major features, such as the Report Centre, Spam Centre and our jQuery conversion are just starting to be worked on but accessing 1.8 should, however, give you an idea of the direction we’re heading in and what we’re trying to achieve with this version of MyBB. It should also allow developers to keep on track with what changes we’re making and, with that in mind, we do encourage anyone interested in working with 1.8 to get involved or get in touch via the 1.8 sections on our forum (coming soon).

Getting Involved

To get involved with MyBB development you will first need a GitHub account. Then, follow these steps:

• Fork the repository
• If you want to fix a bug – switch to the stable branch
• If you want to work with 1.8 – switch to the feature branch
• Make your changes (ensuring you follow the MyBB Development Standards) and push them to your forked repository
• Send us a pull request via GitHub with your changes and make sure you reference the issue ticket number your changes relate to (update the ticket too to tell us you’ve fixed it)
• SQA will provide feedback and, if it passes verification, your changes are merged into MyBB

GitHub Issues to replace Redmine

At the moment MyBB uses Redmine to power our issue tracker. Over time, we will be migrating to use GitHub’s inbuilt Issues tracker to provide closer integration between the repository and reported issues. It should also create a one-point resource for all development.

We’re starting this migration with MyBB 1.8. If you find a bug or problem within the feature branch you should first report it in the MyBB 1.8 Bugs & Issues forum. This allows members of the community to discuss the issue and confirm that it is, in fact, a bug. Once confirmed, a member of the MyBB Team will use a clever custom plugin (developed by Nathan Malcolm) to move the issue to GitHub for developers to work on a fix.

The new workflow eliminates the need for a separate account on Redmine and should allow more members to contribute towards development.

The MyBB 1.8 sections on the Community Forum will be available soon. In the mean time, please use the MyBB 1.6/1.8 Suggestions & Feedback forum.

Summary

There is a lot of new information here but it’s just the start of a new journey for MyBB and our community. By improving reporting methods, making it possible for non-team members to contribute and continuing to work on our new series we feel confident that MyBB will continue to be the best free forum software for years to come.

With thanks,

The MyBB Team

What’s added/changed in this version?

It has come to our attention that there is an SQL injection vulnerability in all versions of MyBB, including MyBB 1.6.8. We advise all MyBB forum owners to upgrade their forum as soon as possible.

With thanks to frostschutz and StefanT for finding and reporting these issues.

Vulnerabilities fixed:

• High Risk: An SQL vulnerability when editing a post
• Medium Risk: CAPTCHA systems non effective, providing possible brute-force access

Bugs fixed:

• An issue with the editor not working in Firefox 16 and above

We apologise for any inconvenience.

Upgrading from 1.6.8 and Other Versions

Before performing any upgrade please remember to backup your forum’s files and database and store them safely. If you have edited core files, including language files, please make sure you make a changelog for these changes so you can make them again once the upgrade is complete.

To upgrade, follow the Upgrading process. The upgrade script is required. There are changes to 1 language file (messages.lang.php). There are changes to 3 templates (portal_welcome_guesttext, loginbox & codebuttons).

If you’re using MyBB 1.6.8

• Download and use the Changed Files Package
• Follow the upgrading instructions

If you’re using MyBB 1.6.7 or below

• Download and use the full 1.6.9 Release Package
• Follow the upgrading instructions

Reporting MyBB Security Vulnerabilities

If you think you’ve found a vulnerability in MyBB, we advise you not to publicly post it on these forums or publicly release information about it elsewhere until we’ve had time to prepare and release a patch.

As always, you can send through security related messages on the MyBB website from the Contact Us page or in our Private Inquiries forum – where you can start a new thread that only you and the MyBB Team can see.

Thank you,

MyBB Team

We’d like to remind users of the immense power plugins have which, when used incorrectly, could pose security implications for your forum.  Theme files also can contain backdoor PHP scripts which can grant access to your server.  Therefore, great care should be taken both in terms of which plugins are installed and where the modifications were obtained from. Specifically, nulled or pirated mods pose the biggest threat of all given that the origin of the file is unknown and any sharer could have inserted malicious code.

Even when downloading mods directly from the author we recommend thoroughly researching both the plugin/theme and the author to establish that they are reputable and have a good standing with their customers and users.

If you have any further questions, concerns or examples please don’t hesitate to contact us via the Private Inquiries forum.

Regards, The MyBB Team.

With that in mind, whenever we do come to develop around a feature, we’re cautious to remove the legacy it might leave behind. It is often a tough decision between moving forward and embracing something new and doing what we know. MyBB 1.8 gives us a great chance to look around and research how to improve these features for our users; with around 40 planned research projects into different areas of MyBB we’re aiming to bring a higher level of usability and functionality to your forum.

Avatar Changes

With Gravatar, an avatar hosting service, being integrated into WordPress, Redmine and GitHub (alongside other websites and many 3rd party addons for other software) it brings together an opportunity for us to provide a consistent platform for users to have the same look wherever they go. In MyBB 1.8 you can now use your Gravatar email in the Avatar URL field. Options in the ACP allow Administrators to control the content of avatars with Gravatar’s age-based rating systems.

The MyBB 1.8 Change Avatar

Alongside Gravatar is our new format_avatar function. This introduces the ability to pass a user’s avatar information to a single function to work out the correct dimensions to display on the page; it also means we aren’t parsing the same avatar twice for the same user on the same page. If the user has no avatar set Administrators are able to set a default avatar from the ACP to use instead.

These changes do come with some sad news; in MyBB 1.8, we’ve removed the avatar gallery feature. We’ll all be disappointed to see the end of Supertux and Mr Spam but we thought it best to keep a clear and simple method to change user avatars in which the avatar gallery was a much non-used feature to the majority of forums.

News and Version Check Changes

One of the main aims of MyBB 1.8 is to help improve the services we offer to our own users. This involves keeping users up to date about what’s happening and new versions of MyBB.

News Feed in the ACP

In the ACP, we’ve introduced a small news feed into the Dashboard. We’ve also moved the Version Check, which used to have its own section, into the Dashboard too so that all updates are in the same place right in front of administrators. A new task is to be added to regularly check for any updates (versions and news) rather than relying on users to catch the ‘Your last version check was…’ message that may otherwise be easily missed.

The Little Things

Some of the other, smaller changes to MyBB 1.8 come to fix those trivial things people may (or may not) have noticed. These include removing the option to rate your own thread and changing trim() in templates to rtrim() so that those with OCD can create pretty source code for their themes.

We’re also looking to provide public access to our GitHub repositories in the very near future where a few problems have stopped us from doing so sooner. As soon as the MyBB 1.8 theme changes are ready we’ll also be making that project available too – alongside development standards for non-team members for those who want to get involved in helping us create the best free forum software.

Changes on the Team

Many will have noticed some changes on the team recently. We’ve welcomed back on-board Polarbear541 to our SQA Team and StefanT and Nathan Malcolm have moved over from SQA to the Development Team. All have quickly jumped into their new roles and we’re looking forward to their contributions.

Joining the Team

Being apart of the MyBB family and developing the future of forum software is no small task. Being volunteers takes dedication and patience as well as the skills to pull off your role. Take a look at Joining the Team, and if you meet the descriptions, send us an application – we’d love to have you on the Team!

Now let’s get to what’s really important: what’s changed? how does it work? what’s new?
The entire Mods site is now based on a single word: collaboration.
You will now be able to have people working on the same project as you, contributing to it, discussing it…in one single place.

Major features:

• Collaboration
• Control Panel
• Builds
• Bug Tracker
• Suggestions

Collaboration
When you create a project (no matter what kind of project is – a plugin, graphic, whatever) you will be considered the author of that project.
As the author, you can invite other people to become collaborators of your project and help you with it – being it as a tester, developer or anything else.

Control Panel
The Control Panel is the place where you can view what’s going on over the projects you work on and of course, manage invitations from other users.
Another feature of the Control Panel is the one that lets you create a project (for obvious reasons, this is the most important one).
When you create a project you are required to submit an initial build and that project will be set for “Awaiting Approval” unless you are considered an “Approved Developer”.
An “Approved Developer” is someone we think has gained enough confidence from us to believe that any project created by that person is safe for the end user.

Builds
Every project is now built around builds. That is, whenever you want to upload a new change you just submit a new build (a ZIP containing the latest data).
That build is automatically considered “dev” and can be downloaded by anyone. When you think you’ve reached a stable status, you can switch (requires approval) to “stable”.
The latest stable build is the one that appears on the download page – don’t worry, you can browse a list of builds and download any.
Builds may only be submitted by the author and its collaborators.

Bug Tracker
Is there a better way to have a stable project than having a bug tracker built-in with the new system? We thought one would be very important and decided to implement it.
You can decide if it’s private (author only) and if collaborators can access it or not or even give access to certain users who are not direct collaborators.
If you don’t agree with us and don’t like bug trackers or have a bug tracker somewhere else, you can even link to that one if you wish and disable the default one.

The way the bug tracker works is similar to the way Redmine works so if you’re used to work with Redmine you will not find strange to work with this one – but of course, don’t expect it to be thaaaaaat powerful, I only have got two hands!

Suggestions
Receiving feedback from users is very important if you want to create amazing software. Because of that, we decided to implement a Suggestions page in which users can give suggestions for your project.
If you don’t like it, feel free to disable it, it’s all up to you!

Other Features
Besides those major features, the Mods site also contains a few others which make it even better:
* Previews – you can now manage your project preview images in a much better way than before.
* Translations – plugin projects are the only ones who have got translations and can be easily managed by collaborators – only they can submit translations.
* Change Log – whenever you submit a new build, you are required to enter a change log. The change log of the project is the combination of every build’s change log.
* Recommended – we got rid of the project ratings. You can recommend projects but not give any rating.
* Statistics – this page shows you relevant information about the most downloaded projects as well as the most recommended ones.
* Mod CP – Projects and Builds can be easily managed from the Mod CP which speeds up the approval process.
* Whenever an update is awaiting approval, users can still download the latest stable (or any other) build without problems.
* If the project hasn’t been updated for more than 6 months, you will see that information when viewing the project page.
* Support – a new link has been added to the project page which links to the Plugin Support forum on the MyBB Community. However, project authors can change that link to their site’s URL if they wish.
* Optionally, users may enter their PayPal email address which will result in a Donate button being shown on the project page.

We hope you are still excited about it. We are too. We really want to push this live as soon as possible but as you know, we all do this on our free time. One thing is certain though: we want to release this at the same time as MyBB 1.8 (or perhaps sooner!).

Thank you!

We know you’re all just as excited about MyBB 1.8 as we are, and we haven’t told you everything that is changing yet, so we’re stepping it up a gear to put it all together as fast as we can without compromising our new features. We’ve tried setting deadlines (and failing miserably) and I know you’re sick of the usual ready-when-it’s-ready story so all I can say is please bear with us. We’ll be working hard to bring you this feature update and that starts with our move to GitHub.

Git Migration

Part of the fallout from when MyBB.com was partly taken over was to have an overview look at how we do things behind the scenes to see if we could improve our services. This understandably has a knock-on effect on our development; we decided it was best to drop SVN and move to GitHub ahead of the 1.8 schedule. MyBB 1.6 development also happens over there too.

We’ve briefly hidden the 1.6 repository so that our team can get used to this new service and for us to sort out some new standards for developers and contributors to follow. This is a pretty big change not only for users but for our team as well so we need to take some time to get used to it too.

That being said, we haven’t quite got rid of everything. We will still be using the development site – powered by Redmine – as the central place to report bugs and issues with MyBB and the Merge System. It is up and running but we are having a few problems syncing the repository on GitHub and our local copy here. We hope to have this – and the GitHub project – up and running soon.

Consistency in 1.8

A general trait that has been hanging over 1.8 during planning and early development is consistency; making sure everything we do looks and feels the same as though it is from the same product, system and service. Everything from MyBB.com to the install process on your own forums will be getting a makeover to the new upgraded style giving MyBB in general a clean modern look. We’ve replaced the popular FamFamFam icons with the equally popular Fugue icon set to give 1.8′s UX (user experience) a fresh appeal – meaning 1.8 uses CSS buttons and carries PNG icons instead of GIFs. We’re looking into providing sprite images too for the ever-conscious large forum owner as well as providing theme artists a new opportunity with this style of coding.

1.8 Installer and Postbit

Alongside the jQuery update and base colours, 1.8 themes are sure to be some of the best in the series.

Full Feature Update

So, as you might have thought by now, MyBB 1.8 is going to be a bigger update than most people imagined. While not 2.0-esque, it will certainly provide a full feature update that will require careful planning and action. And, to settle the nerves of the plugin developers, there will be no major updates to the plugin system – meaning for the majority only the compatibility section of your plugins will need updated for them work in 1.8.

By providing an update like this we hope to extend the life of the 1.x series while also providing the tools and processes for developers to create even more amazing themes and plugins. It also gives us, as a team, a chance to rebalance our own structure to provide a better product for you all to enjoy.