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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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