Category Archives: Development

MyBB 1.8 Beta 1 Released

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That’s right. After a long time of waiting we’re getting near a 1.8 stable release. Today it’s with great pleasure that we’re releasing the first beta version of MyBB 1.8. NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT READY TO BE USED ON A LIVE WEBSITE.

For some of you this may not mean much, for some others this may mean a lot. Quite a few things have been greatly enhanced and some important features have been added in this release.

 

Color legend:

  • Dark Blue – Small (new) feature/change
  • Light Blue – Enhancement
  • Orange – New Feature

 

We’re not mentioning bug fixes below (the same bug fixes applied to the 1.6 branch are also applied to 1.8 as of now and the bugs for 1.8 only are not mentioned as that would only be important if 1.8 was already stable.), only small feature changes, enhancements and entirely new features.

 

AdminCP

  • New theme – #561
  • AdminCP PIN – #38
  • Improved Newsfeed – #562
  • Replace CodePress with CodeMirror – #37
  • Stylesheet Display order – #562
  • Inactive/active Plugin list – #573
  • Ability to create own template groups – #588
  • Added Enabled/Disabled indicators to Promotions and MyCodes – #457
  • Template groups updates – #452
  • Disable Attachments Globally – #495
  • ACP Banning Improvements – #554
  • Selectable areas for group/forum settings. – #428
  • Warning for marked vulnerable plugins. – #0147b08

Front-end

  • New Theme – #571
    • CSS buttons, PNG images, Sprite images, Fugue icons – #571
    • Attachable base colors for themes – #580
    • Relative Time – #558
    • Prototype to jQuery Conversion (yay!) – #251
    • Attachment Types Name – #442
    • CSS Minification – #564
  • Add ltrim() to search users input – #590
  • Change trim() in templates to rtrim() – #584
  • A tool to rebuild reputation – #591
  • Contact Page – #592
  • Ability to delete default help topics – #589
  • If user is invisible & permissions disallow, hide all public data – #593
  • Post reputation should include thread subject – #594
  • Remove Gallery; Integrate Gravatar – #582 #586
  • Delete post on full edit should not show if no permission to delete – #595
  • Add option to stick/unstick to custom tools – #435
  • PM thread author in custom tools for threads – #581
  • Users cannot rate their own posts – #570
  • format_avatar() function – #569
  • Whitelist of avatar upload extensions – #568
  • Preview announcements – #567
  • Minimum post length to exclude MyCode – #566
  • IPv6 features – #565
  • APC cache handler – #574
  • $cache->delete method – #575
  • is_member() function – #576
  • delete_user() function – #408
  • IP addresses in PMs – #563
  • Don’t ask for validation if validation is disabled – #577
  • Slow reply posting in long threads – #578
  • Soft Delete – #560
  • Login Datahandler – #572
  • Add theme selector to footer – #496
  • Forum redirect icon – #453
  • Permission to reply to own threads – #409
  • ModCP banned users list descending by default – #138
  • Quick Reply PM – #437
  • Poll Updates (Add poll link to thread page; limit of time before a thraed author can no longer add a poll) – #456
  • Update contact fields – #455
  • Are You a Human CAPTCHA – #443
  • Report Center – #556
  • More Hooks – #555
  • Ability to sort Private Messages in inbox and other folders – #70
  • Recount Warning Points – #85
  • Warning points as a Group Promotion criteria – #88
  • Registration date and last active time as mass mail criteria – #100
  • Display profile fields on posts – #133
  • Add “Display posts in classic mode” option when editing user in Admin CP – #107
  • Move Edit Time Limit and Max Post Per Day to group settings – #114
  • Recount Private Messages – #132
  • Hide members from the Member List – #142
  • Force redirect page – #550
  • Searching plugins will highlight vulnerable ones (requires new Mods site) – Commit Link

 

Download

ONCE AGAIN, THIS IS NOT READY TO BE USED ON A LIVE WEBSITE! DO NOT UPGRADE YOUR LIVE WEBSITE TO THIS VERSION.

The download can be found here.

Upgrade

You are NOT supposed to upgrade any 1.6 boards to 1.8 Beta 1 hence why we do not provide upgrading instructions. This is because you will not be able to upgrade from any of the Betas to 1.8.

 

Bug Reports

Found a bug? (or perhaps a few more…) Please post your detailed bug report in the 1.8 Bug Reports forum. Please always double-check if the issue hasn’t been reported already.

 

Themes and Plugins Assistance

If you have any development questions about possible issues you may have while upgrading your themes or your plugins – or issues you may actually be having – please post in this forum.

 

What’s next?

We’re going to continue working hard on Beta 2 and start preparing 2.0 development so we can start working on it as soon as MyBB 1.8 hits stable this Summer. If you want to help us out and become a Contributor, make sure to read this blog post. If you’d rather join the team, feel free to contact through Private Inquires.

 

Best Regards,
The MyBB Group

Team Changes and Moving Forward

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With the release of MyBB 1.6.13, the team felt there was a need to address some issues that affect the future of the Project, the Community and the Team in general.

Developers and MyBB Development Workflow

With the departure of Nathan and Tomm, MyBB has once again found itself in need of active team members. This, along with the unavailability of most current developers due to time constraints caused by life issues, led to us breaking our workflow, which as you may have noticed ended up delaying the release of MyBB 1.6.13. After MyBB 1.6.13 was out, work on 1.8 Beta 1 has been resumed (and you can clearly see that by examining the commits made for on github in the ‘feature’ branch).

Moving forward with 2.0.

Initially 1.6 was supposed to lead to 2.0 directly, but with the team feeling that 2.0 was still in very early development, MyBB would lose to its competitors for quite a bit of time (the development time of 2.0). Thus, work was put into “modernizing” the look and feel of 1.6 before the complete rewrite, and so 1.8 was born. As anticipated, this has delayed work on 2.0 of course. Once 1.8 is released (Beta 1 is nearing its completion; at time of writing only one feature is left to finish: jQuery conversion; all the other open issues aimed for Beta 1 are bugs) work will start on 2.0. There has been a lot of talk of MyBB being a “dead project”, but this is very far from the truth. As an open source project, as long as we have active developers, the project will never be “dead”. But we need the community’s help – we’ve been helping you for a long time, we’re asking you to help us now  – so if you feel that you know MyBB pretty well but most of all, if you feel that you have value to give to the team and project, contact us!

Changes that we are implementing now

It became apparent to us, that one of the major problems we have had was losing key team leaders. As you may remember, we recently got rid of the “Team Leader” role, and went with a more equal structure. This did not promote (as we had intended) productivity. So we have come up with a new system, whereby developers will take turns taking the “lead” on a per version basis. This will keep them all updated with the procedures required to package and release new versions. We are pleased to announce the Stefan T will be assuming the role of Lead Developer first and and the next should be Pirata Nervo (after that a new internal poll will be made). We are also pleased to announce that King Louis will be assuming the position of SQA team lead (the leader here doesn’t change as we believe the SQA team requires a static leader).

Recruitment

As mentioned above, we are now looking for more active members for both Development, Support, and more importantly SQA (we’re running low here!).  If you feel that you would be a good addition to the team, why not submit some pull requests on Github and/or drop an application to using the contact form, posting a thread in Private Inquiries (recommended) or even by PM’ing us.  You cand read more about the responsibilities here. Do not be afraid of contacting us, we won’t bite you – but we’ll be always be honest with you.

 

Reporting Bugs and Issues and New Development Changes

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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!

MyBB 1.8 Tour: Roadmap

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MyBB 1.8 is the next minor release for the 1.x series. The aim of this release is to introduce a level of standardisation and organisation that MyBB has previously lacked and to bring the series into line with other products and services that we hope to bring to you in the near future.

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.

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

MyBB 1.8 Tour: The Retirement of Supertux

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As MyBB approaches its 10th-year anniversary it’s quite easy for us to dwell on history. Even with the changes we’re working on in MyBB 1.8 you can still compare the early versions of our product to our next major release and see that they are made from the same group of people. Despite the dozens of Developers, SQA Testers, Support Team members, PR guys and Management we’ve had over this time, who have each made their mark in their own way, the consistency of MyBB as a forum system at its core is one of the fundamental mantras of the MyBB Group.

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.

Changing Avatar

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

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!

Mods Site Tour

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You’ve been hearing this for months, if not years by now: the new Mods site is coming soon.
That was in fact, always true. However, the person who was working on it had to leave the team last year and left us his work.
Since I offered myself to do the Mods site, I decided to start from scratch and create a plugin instead of a separate website – that would make integration much easier.
I started back in October 2011 and by now the Mods site is almost fully operational – apart from the Plugin Translations feature and a few final touches, everything is done! It has been tested thoroughly by me and the rest of the team and even though it’s not perfect, it does what we wanted to just fine.

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!

MyBB 1.8 Tour: July Update

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Since we announced MyBB 1.8 back in April work towards making a public beta has been slow. This time of year is traditionally the busiest for the team members with exams, workloads and personal projects – not to the mention most of us enjoying the summer (or lack of, in some cases!) – often taking over from our usual MyBB duties. Where we were once working on the code every day there has been weeks without anything being done at all. This is, unfortunately, the perils of volunteer work.

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

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.

MyBB 1.8 Tour: Introduction

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On April 1st we announced a 1.6.7 Update which updated both MyBB and the Merge System. If you haven’t seen this or not upgraded yet please make sure you read the MyBB and Merge System 1.6.7 Release blog post. We also announced our plans for MyBB 1.8; it was no April Fool.

Back in 2010, just under 2 years ago, we released MyBB 1.6 which introduced over 40 new features – some more at home in commercial software. As MyBB’s popularity continues to grow, the rise of social networks, rival software and the greater expectations of users old and new gives us some of the hardest challenges we’ve faced; to stay on top, to deliver a brilliant product and provide it to you for free.

With our development roadmap for MyBB 2.0 getting underway soon, we quickly felt the need to bridge the large gap that would have been 1.6 to 2.0. We wanted to create something that would provide a legacy to users of the 1.x series – the best of the best – and there was only one way we could get that to our users; MyBB 1.8.

What You Can Expect From 1.8

Whereas 1.2, 1.4 and 1.6 delivered over 100 new features 1.8 aims to be more of a subtle upgrade, a facelift and a move to more open source development so that others too can help create the best free forum software. We’ll of course be providing the usual bug fixes and working with large forum owners to see if we can help further improve performance and stability. MyBB 1.8 is a perfect chance for us to provide changes that we couldn’t typically do within our maintenance cycles.

A New Look

When we announced our new logo and mascot, Bolt, the Team soon realised that we didn’t want to wait until 2.0 was released to use them. The 1.6 default theme made these look out of place in its dated design (which was last updated in 2008) so we needed something more up to date. Justin, our lead designer, who created the Apart theme series (from which many MyBB communities either use or have customised the look for themselves) has worked on developing the series for the new 1.8 default theme. We worked together to figure out a method for enabling the Apart colours to be included by default but without the need for including 14 separate themes before the administrator even opened their forum. This method is what we call attachable base colours.

The new default theme for MyBB 1.8

These changes to the theme system allow you to create colours to which you can attach stylesheets (just like you can attach stylesheets to pages). You can also set a display order for all your stylesheets so that they can override styles. Together, the changes mean you can add a theme with as many custom colours as you want. Using the parent/child theme structure that already exists in 1.x you can restrict or allow certain usergroups to use these colours and, as they inherit the main stylesheets, they’re very easy to manage. So, there is no longer the need to install a dozen different themes just for a different colour header.

A New Look Admin Control Panel (ACP)

Along with the new default theme there needs to be a new look Admin Control Panel (ACP). Our ACP is regarded as one of the easiest to use; it’s friendly and we didn’t want to change it much. Instead, we gave it a similar Apart makeover to our front-end.

Screenshot of the MyBB 1.8 ACP

Please note that along with the default theme the look may change as development continues.

Powered by jQuery

While 1.8 won’t be able to make your cocoa or project your forum’s logo onto the moon, much to our disappointment, we really weren’t pulling a prank on this one; MyBB 1.8 will be powered by jQuery. The lighter and more powerful JavaScript library should be able to extend what both Theme Artists and Plugin Developers are able to do without causing conflicts or heavy loading pages. Both front-end and back-end will use the library. This change is probably the most destructive for themes and plugins in the 1.8 upgrade and we’ll be providing support throughout its beta period ready for a main release. In total, including the changes to the default theme, about 20 templates require updating from 1.6.

Along with jQuery comes a change in post editor. Although I’ve had my eye on an ‘off the shelf’ editor for quite some time we’ve yet to make a decision on whether we write our own or not; we’ll be covering that in a future tour. However, please don’t suggest which editor to use as our aim is to make it interchangeable so you can use your favourite one.

Trash Can

One of the most requested features for MyBB is a trash can – or as I prefer, the ability to recover deleted posts. In 1.8, you’ll be able to decide if a user’s deleted post is obliterated forever or is recoverable via the Mod CP. Global and usergroup permissions will allow this to be controlled across your users.

Spam Improvements

For those of you waiting for Spam Ninja I’m very sorry to disappoint as I did promise it to you last year. As soon as 1.8 was decided, I stopped developing it as a plugin and started integrating relevant parts into the core instead. We’ll be looking to improve spam prevention and detection in 1.8 which we’ll cover in a future tour.

Upgrading to 1.8

Upgrading to 1.8 will be similar to upgrading from 1.4 to 1.6; many plugins will only need to change their compatibility line and will only need some major changes if they use Prototype JavaScript, use login functions or make large theme changes. Throughout the beta period, we’ll be upgrading the Wiki with new information and providing support to plugin developers to help them with their new plugins.

Github

The Team has been trying to plan a move away from our current SVN setup to the popular social coding site Github for some time. We’ve come up against problems but feel confident that now is the time to open up our development to people outside of the MyBB Team. Github can be an extremely powerful tool for development and it is something we’re eager to do – we have been working on 1.8 in secret in one of our repositories there which will be made available after our first beta release.

We’ve gone outside of our usual box with 1.8 in that we’re actually telling you what we’re doing and what we’re planning even though none of this is public. We’re aiming to provide a beta of 1.8 in May so please be patient while we’re polishing our development and removing all the takeaways and soft drink cans.

Wrap

With MyBB 1.8, our aim is to fully complete the series with features and improvements that make us a better rival not only to our free forum software friends but also to commercial community software too. We want to make it more friendly, faster and go further than any of our products have been before. Everyone here at MyBB is looking forward to 1.8 and hope you are too!

See you at the next tour!

Tomm

Developing the Future

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After almost 8 years, MyBB has certainly come a long way. Its popularity among forum software is strong, and with the release of 1.6 almost a year ago it just keeps growing and growing. With its simplicity and extensions, there’s really nothing you can’t do with MyBB. Every member of the Team, past and present, are no doubt proud of where we are today.

However, we can’t sit still in the ever moving world of forums and message boards. New software appears – it seems, every month – which people expect MyBB to better, and who are we to disappoint? It’s time for us to develop the future.

MyBB 1.6

While there are no new ‘features’ expected for the 1.6 series of MyBB, we’re still dedicated to maintaining it and making sure your forum (and business) is safe.

1.6.4 – where there are over 100 issues that have been fixed – is going to be available very soon. It fixes some (very) old issues dating back years including some obscure security issues. While none of these are ‘high risk’ issues or bugs, it’s always a nice feeling knowing that your site is as stable as it can be. We aren’t just stopping there though – this version is the first in a minor release to have ‘feature updates’.

These feature updates are small improvements to MyBB – as apposed to feature releases which are big changes – and range from things like a setting to globally switch on/off all plugins to providing better access for Plugin Developers and Administrators to check for updates. These will be coming throughout the 1.6 series – and if they affect Plugin Developers or Theme Artists, we’ll keep you informed before their release on the MyBB Community Forums.

Spam Prevention

This year, there has been somewhat of an explosion in the amount of human-cooked spam. More realistic than the robot kind, this spam can range from signature links to forums filled with posts in hours. While the best method is moderation – and reporting users who do spam – there’s always going to be better methods and controls for protecting your forum and cleaning up after them. That’s why we’re working to produce Spam Ninja – a feature update for the 1.6 series that will introduce basic controls to help you eliminate spam and their robot|human chefs permanently.

The Spam Ninja update will be available later this year and will be completely optional if you use it or not. More information on the new features it introduces will be announced closer to the time.

Alongside maintaining 1.6 however, developing MyBB 2 is just as important.

MyBB 2.0

At MyBB, we tend to keep 2.0 secrets close – it’s not that we don’t want you to know! It’s because as the development process moves on, coding and features are more than likely going to change so we don’t want to promise things that might never materialize. Rest assured, while many may think that 2.0 is a mere myth, it does exist and we’ll be walking through some of the boring stuff that won’t be likely to change.

We’ve made no surprises that Justin – our Lead Designer – has created the awesome 2.0 default theme. It brings sweeping changes to the thread and forum layout that will make MyBB stand out from other software, and contrary to a popular thread on the Community, it definitely does not look like vBulletin. While the software still has that MyBB look and charm, it does mean that we’ve had the chance to reorganize various other areas – such as introducing conversation-style Private Messaging, a simplified User CP and Moderation Queues to make things much more modern, efficient and user friendly. As you would expect, it looks and feels like a state-of-the-art forum system.

While we won’t be showing off the software just yet, we can still keep you in the loop.

MyBB 2.0 has been written from scratch in a MVC (Model-View-Controller) method and we’ve been using Yii as its base framework. Standing for “Yes It Is!”, Yii is a powerful, very secure and fast framework and after a very long process, we found it to be the best choice for MyBB. Its database abstraction layers introduces various options (including PDO transactions and Active Record, Yii’s Object Relational Mapping (ORM) techniques) and it provides some fantastically simple language and internationalization ideas. We’ve also used the Twig Template Engine for views, increasing security and adding various possibilities of using PHP in templates. You can see an example (currently part of the 2.0 “login” page) of a Twig template and its output in the screenshot to the right.

For languages, we’re embracing Yii’s language translations. As an example, to translate a string in 2.0 you simply call like this:

// Structure of the 'global' language file
return array(
   'mybb_welcome' => 'Welcome to MyBB {version}!',
   'language_string' => 'Another language string',
   'language_string_2' => "Yet another language string that's awesome."
);

// An example of use in the software
// Will display 'Welcome to MyBB {version}!'
$foo = Yii::t('global', 'mybb_welcome');

// Will display 'Welcome to MyBB 2.0!'
$foo = Yii::t('global', 'mybb_welcome', array('{version}' => Yii::app()->mybb->version));

You can call on whatever language file you want from anywhere in the software. Making a language pack is just as easy as it was in 1.6 too – if not easier!

Another area we’re keen to improve on is MyBB’s installer. The new version introduces a one-click install – you just simply enter all your details and the process practically completes itself. See the screenshot of the introduction page!

As you can tell, we have the basics of the software prepped and ready to start. It’s no longer ‘Planning’, but what I would call ‘Pre-Production’ – where we concrete ideas, features and most importantly, a road map, are written. After working with 2.0, I can tell you that the future definitely is exciting. It’s never tasted so good!

Developing for MyBB

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!