Tag Archives: Getting Involved

Getting Involved: Contributors

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It’s been a while since we announced the contributors group – we’ve had quite a few pages of discussion about it since then, some of us came up with ideas in order to promote it, and some came up with problems that would come out of those ideas. We’ve finally come to an agreement!

 

What is the Contributors Usergroup?

This is the MyBB Group’s recognition of your valued contributions to the project. We feel that the people in the Contributors usergroup are the main figures in the community that drive the project forward. Getting in is a matter of invitation not request and exceptions will not be made to this.

 

I’ve done contributing but I haven’t been added, what’s going on?

The MyBB Group assesses who we feel should be in the Contributor group on a per user basis. You may have had lots of Pull Requests merged or submitted plugins/themes to the Mods Site and not been added, this could be a mixture of reasons: 1) We’ve not got around to adding you; 2) We don’t feel you have contributed enough given the quality of your Pull Requests; 3) We haven’t noticed – we are all volunteers and some things slip through the net. If you feel strongly that you should be in this group then contact one of our Community Team members and they would be pleased to talk to you about the circumstances of you not being in the group.

 

I was in the Contributors group but now I’m not, did I blink and miss something?

Places in the Contributors group are for those that the MyBB group feels are active contributors towards the project. If you stop making good quality Pull Requests/plugins/themes or stop being involved in conversations after a good period of time, you may be removed at the discretion of the MyBB group. This group is in place so that the community can help MyBB evolve, if you’re not doing this then you’re not fulfilling the ‘job description’ of the group.

 

Requirements

  • You have a past of good development (Plugins, Pull Requests, Tutorials)
  • You submit five pull requests that are accepted to MyBB codebase.
  • You submit ten pull requests that are accepted to the docs.

 

By meeting at least one of the requirements above you will be moved to the Contributors group – you’ll have a badge next to your username on your profile and posts.

Besides that, you’ll be able to participate the 1.8 Discussion forum and at a later point, 2.0 Discussion.

If you do not meet any of the requirements yet we recommend you to look at our Workflow and change that!

Getting Involved: MyBB GitHub Now Available

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Back in June 2012, after our MyBB.com domain was hijacked, we removed public access to our development repositories and moved to GitHub.

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

Official IRC Channel

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The MyBB Group has had an IRC channel for several years hosted on irc.msgplus.net but it hasn’t been widely publicized for a long time and is only regularly used by a small number of people. Today we’re announcing something of a relaunch for the official MyBB IRC channel and with it our move to the Freenode network.

One of the main reasons for the move has to do with the fact that MyBB is now an open-source project. Freenode is a huge hub of open-source software groups and many well know projects maintain a presence there. By moving our channel onto the Freenode network we hope to add a new arm to our existing community whilst expanding our reach further into the wider open-source community. Also, since Freenode is quite a popular IRC network it’s possible the IRC users amongst you may already have an account registered there.

MyBB staff will be around some of the time but this is not an official support resource. Official support will remain to be solely available on the MyBB Community Forums. The IRC channel is intended as more of an informal place for users to come along and engage with other members of the community, although common sense rules will apply.

If you feel like coming along and joining us, you can do so by connecting your IRC client of choice to irc.freenode.net and joining #mybb. Alternatively a web-chat interface is available at http://webchat.freenode.net/.

Happy chatting.

Getting Involved: Development site opens

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For the past seven years, MyBB has had an ever-growing and changing community, and through it all the “MyBB Group” itself is still a small set of dedicated individuals. Up until now MyBB has been developed in a relatively private fashion.  Recently, it seems as the tides have turned; we have realized that you want more: you want the cutting edge, you want to be more a part of the “Real MyBB”, and you want the best free forum software that free can buy. We’ve listened to your advice, and we are now pleased to announce the availability of public access to our development site, including access to the latest and greatest cutting edge MyBB!

What does this mean for you?

With the community more closely involved with MyBB’s development, we will be able to ensure releases are more stable and you will be able to get access to the latest bug fixes and features. We hope that by making our development site available and open to the public that more people will take an interest in MyBB and get involved!

How exactly do you get access?

The link to the development site is http://dev.mybboard.net/. This will give you direct access to our MyBB 1.4 repository, MyBB 1.6 repository including all the latest features and fixes. This will also be where you report bugs with MyBB and its related projects. We have generated detailed information on our Wiki’s revamped Development section: http://wiki.mybboard.net/index.php/Development. The Development section will be the best place to ask your questions and concerns regarding the site, SVN access, coding standards, and other procedures.

Please note that the MyBB group officially supports only the latest release series, as of writing, MyBB 1.4.x.  Although you have access to the latest MyBB 1.6.x code, there may be partially-committed features which are broken.  We do not recommend using the development “trunk” on production forums, and they will NOT be supported by the support staff here.

All things MyBB

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We’ve been reasonably quiet between the release of MyBB 1.4.4 and 1.4.5, but that doesn’t mean that nothing has been going on behind the scenes. This blog post aims to outline some of what has been going on at MyBB during the last couple of months.

Over the past few weeks you may have noticed a few changes with our current staff, whether it was removal of staff or a change of position. Some changes may not even be noticeable by you but I’ll outline them all anyway.

  • Chris Boulton
    Due to time restraints placed on Chris by work, Chris was finding it difficult to find a balance between work and play whilst including MyBB and therefore has shifted some of the lower priority, day-to-date responsibilities of product management to Dennis Tsang. To be clear, Chris will still be involved in the MyBB project and will be overseeing the project from an executive aspect.
  • Dennis Tsang
    Dennis will be taking on more of the the day-to-day operations and administrative tasks that Chris Boulton used to do.
  • destroyer (Kevin Camps)
    Kevin will take on some content management duties, this includes the MyBB website, MyBB Wiki, etc. Kevin will also be partly responsible for approving themes, plugins and resources to the Mods section of the MyBB site and help out coordinating the translations with Tochjo.
  • Ryan Loos
    Ryan has made the move from a Support Team member to a Public Relations Liaison. With this new title, Ryan will be responsible for resolving community issues, updating the blog, making Twitter updates from the MyBB Twitter account, seeking new talent to take up positions on the team, in future betas and in the Mentor group and educating other communities on MyBB if their views are a little off.
  • Justin S.
    Justin is now in the developers’ group although he will still maintain the Wiki and continue his design work. He was always a design developer on the team, so the title change just reflects his correct role, although he will be performing all of the same duties as he did before.
  • Tomm M
    Tom’s moved into a developer’s position from his old role as a Support Team member. He’s shown a good understanding of how MyBB’s insides work during his time on the team and has already taken on a good portion of development for MyBB 1.6.
  • Max Marze
    Max too has become a developer and will be working towards getting the new version of the MyBB Merge System out. Specifically, he will help by writing unit testing scripts to ensure that the Merge System, when released in the future, will not have as many problems as in previous releases.
  • MattRogowski
    Matt, though still a part of the Support Team, will also be partly responsible for approving themes, plugins and resources to the Mods section of the MyBB site.
  • sayakb
    Sayak has offered to come on board as an SQA Team member. He’s shown a strong knowledge of MyBB by developing plugins, which can be found at the KDE forums, and testing new MyBB releases for compatibility with the KDE forums.
  • LegosJedi
    We’re saying goodbye to LegosJedi who has left us due to time constraints. We wish LegosJedi best of luck on his future endeavors.
  • Tom Loveric
    Tom has also decided to head his own direction with a custom CMS he is building. We wish him the best of luck in his future and with his CMS.

Recruiting New Support Staff

We’re always looking out for new potential. If you want to be on the MyBB Team, you just have to show:

  • You are dedicated and active to the project
  • You speak English very well and have good communication skills
  • You have good knowledge of how MyBB works and in the position you want to take up

If you don’t feel like we’re noticing you it’s probably just because we’re too busy making the next version of MyBB! So just send us an email via our contact form with “Available Team Member Position” as the subject. Include your forum username. Remember though, your chances are considerably increased if you stand out with the three suggestions listed above.

SQA Team Updates

You might have also noticed the creation of the SQA Team (Software Quality Assurance) right after the release of 1.4.4 due to the amount of problems that were reported after its release. SQA has been able to confirm 95% of fixes are working and don’t cause any regressions that are written by our developers and put into our code base. Among those that they confirmed, SQA was able to find and report dozens of regressions over the course of the entire MyBB 1.4.5 development in over 100 bugs, optimizations, and tweaks. As such, SQA has been a huge success for the MyBB Group and in turn creates much more stable releases for you. We are continuing to perfect the new SQA Team and implement processes that will eliminate preventable issues from the get-go.

Team Interviews

If you’ve ever wanted to know more about the MyBB Group or a particular staff member, now is the chance!  We’ve started a thread where you can post questions for staff members to answer at a later date in a blog post. If you have any questions for specific staff members or groups of staff then head over to the thread and post your questions!