I'm not bothered about 2. If it was released I would still wait 6 months or so before using it to let the teething problems get sorted out.
I don't see the point in doing a 1.10 I don't understand how the software works but it looks like a lot of hard work just to have something that would be pretty much like 1.8
For me I want a software that is working and 1.8 does work. I thing security updates should be made as soon as possible and in just one simple update. A lot of the things in the Milestone don't effect or bother us all.
I would prefer to just see simple security updates as and when they are needed, say once per month.
Another thing I would like would be a way of just getting a fix for a particular problem that is bothering me. I get a lot of answers from the MyBB members and try to give back if I can. But if there was a way of asking for staff help if I was unable to get my problem sorted from the members would be better than doing the updates. Not long ago I felt like I had only just finished an update and another came out.
I'm just a very grateful user of the software and know nothing about the building of it, but I would say why not use the old saying "If it aint broke, don't fix it". ?
Small simple updates for security and a way of getting a fix for a problem would be fine by me, that way the staff and developers have more time to spend on 2 if they feel it's still worth it.
1.8 works and we can all add our changes and plugins to suit what we want. I don't want Google SEO for example built in, I just want a working software that I can tinker with and tailor to the needs of my members.
You asked for input. I'm just a person using the software and say thank you very much for all that you do.
I'd just like to say that I'm reading all the responses here, and taking them into account. I'd like to be able to reach a conclusion for the future direction by the end of the month personally (not sure what the rest of the team thinks) so that we can start moving in that chosen direction sooner rather than later.
(2017-10-06, 04:08 PM)Euan T Wrote: [ -> ]I'd just like to say that I'm reading all the responses here, and taking them into account. I'd like to be able to reach conclusion for the future direction by the end of the month personally (not sure what the rest of the team thinks) so that we can start moving in that chosen direction sooner rather than later.
All due respect:: are youi head-developer? Sounded rather imperative.
(2017-10-06, 04:20 PM)devs Wrote: [ -> ] (2017-10-06, 04:08 PM)Euan T Wrote: [ -> ]I'd just like to say that I'm reading all the responses here, and taking them into account. I'd like to be able to reach conclusion for the future direction by the end of the month personally (not sure what the rest of the team thinks) so that we can start moving in that chosen direction sooner rather than later.
All due respect:: are youi head-developer? Sounded rather imperative.
Yes, I am the development team leader.
I'm bouncing ideas around in my head to see if there's anything I've missed, maybe I was slightly hot-headed here earlier. Anyway. There are quite a few problems with 2.0, even before we think about when it might be released.
For instance, what functionality can we expect to keep in 2.0? I'd imagine that quite a few features from 1.8 would be cut away due to time constraints or simply due to being obsolete (e.g. archive mode). What exactly is 2.0? And what are your plans for it? Some features might make their way into a 2.1, others may not.
At-least, that's my view on it. I didn't want to rule anything out, so I thought about how you *could* drag out the 1.8.x period long enough for 2.0 to come out.
One thing Eric nicely pointed out is that the lack of a responsive design will lead to sites getting penalised by Google. Google takes responsive designs into consideration in it's search algorithm for mobile devices, I don't know what form a solution might take, but I think this one is urgent for webmasters.
MyBB could put more of an emphasis on items in the mods site, however the more custom your theme is, the higher the chances of a plugin failing to inject it's content in a template and you will need to go in and patch the templates manually for it. Would educating users on doing this work to some extent? It seems like it would be a big inconvenience.
Also, MyBB's Team could put an emphasis in educating contributors and users in writing code for Laravel. Possibly in the form of guides and links. Quite a few people are familiar with MyBB 1.x's code, but Laravel is pretty alien to them.
We might also want to think about what constitutes an acceptable break. Would a change to the minimum requirements be out of the question? While it causes trouble with old hosts, it wouldn't necessarily break themes / plugins. That might be an avenue to explore, at the very least.
How much can be ninja-ed into a 1.8 as opposed to my proposed 1.10? phpBB survived with core mods for a decade, although ideally, it would be nice if we kept the level of expertise down.
I agree with Euan T get the decision done ASAP show a clear direction plan.
We all know the must haves in a design of today and i for one am confused by the idea of adding more and more to something rather than sticking to a defined plan.
I can see from these threads that some are using the idea of adding more and more into a core thus extending a time frame for the core to be offered.
MyBB was so good due to the solid core and the update cycle but the simplicity of the plugins and what was a good range but a community that worked together to offer plugins to give the content that users wanted.
for one reason or another the MyBB community splinted over time and others moved on this is reality within a volunteer group but to me as things change so did the clear direction as to how to get 2.0 out.
I do not think people can hang around for 2.0 the reality is other software can offer a way for designers to achieve what they need and as such they move away from the MyBB system.
i cannot see anywhere in these threads there is a needs analysis of the community needs from this software
forgive me if there is but i hate going through multiple threads of the same thing and no clear answers.
I myself just want a solid core that i can build from. that is what plugins are so damn good at.
the lack of responsive design is a big killer, but in all honesty so is social media as they offer there so called all in one solution to keep users using their services as they make the money from keeping you on it as we all know.
how much do you see now "Find us on Facebook" and groups such as clans etc. just using there page how many forums have gone by the way side as a result.
I as a project manager and as a person who works to try and develop volunteers within emergency services in Australia i see a major trend in people not having the time to help others anymore.
Damn i have a desk full of mail around lack of help and services and a lack of people to help them.
i will always believe in the MyBB and no matter what end choice is made will work with that.
tonight i am trying to work on a project using MyBB as the base core the issue i have is being able to offer the content across all devices such a major thing now just offer me a simple core that can be expanded by modules and plugins a solid core is the base that i need offer this and i am sure plugins will come.
damn why can't the dev's offer official MyBB plugins to give the extras. who uses the portal now days for example.
Who uses the calendar
so much that can be offered back to modules such as shown by what IPB did.
(2017-10-06, 05:58 AM)Azah Wrote: [ -> ]https://meta.discourse.org/t/rewrite-in-elm/48677/11
Discourse's views on rewrites are kind of interesting, one situation even seems eerily similar to MyBB.
Quote:Every time I participated in a full rewrite it was a fail of medium to large proportions.
I have to agree and i see similar happening here.
Projects i was in way back in the early 2000's that went into rewrites all fell down due to what is going on here in a lack community offerings.
I have seen so many projects all die because people cannot wait around.
I feel like MyBB has lost its market direction and trying to do to much and taking too long to offer everything in one thing.
I remember posts a long time ago that clearly stated what the direction was and that was a forum and if you wanted xxx features such as blogs etc. then this needed to be a plugin or integration.
I just feel to many have walked away from MyBB into other projects. I do not want to offend Tom or anyone in the Dev group as there are reasons for this but we all know MyBB has fallen behind in many areas and kept in the loop so to speak so as
Euan T said make a decision and get on with it.
if things are going to be open source then offer a direction that is going give people a usable responsive version sooner rather than holding out for a complete rewrite that is still at least a year away.
Some good news. I'm in the mood to write some 2.0 this week, as I found an easier way of getting the builds up and running locally, so I can see the ACP Component for word filters making it's way in, I've poked Euan about a few things regarding it and I'll do a little bit of research now. That said, you can't rely on me for much beyond that as I do things based on my mood, I'm not part of the MyBB Team.
If I say it'll happen, it'll happen promptly, otherwise it's pointless to rely on me for anything beyond that.
However, at the end of the day, MyBB occupies a valuable part of the market, do we really want to be using phpBB or Discourse? It's very important to the market, not just admins and the MyBB Team that it doesn't sink.
But. At the end of the day, I'm not exactly a huge MyBB loyalist, so the door is right there when a better offer comes up whether it's a fork or a competitor.
There are a few misunderstandings between me and Ben, but the general gist is that I've build about four forum software. The first two were in a team with a few other people, the last two on my own independent. And I'll say it straight out, the first two were not masterpieces. They were bad. Pretty bad. Horrible coding standards.
And this wasn't some problem someone left on my doorstop, but my fault as much as theirs. And I regret none of it. I don't. The mistakes I made have shown me a lot, both about developing forums, but also about programming in general. One mistake I made with the third, ABB which Euan has seen before in action, is making too many assumptions about the market and not challenging them.
It's all too easy for projects to fall into a certain set of assumptions which are almost taken as gospel. For instance, at MyBB, it was seen as all too natural that 2.0 will be the next version and that discussing this is futile. I opened up a topic to explore an alternative and that snowballed into this.
The previous MyBB Team, not the current, were also very stubborn regarding the concept of "CMS Features". E.g. Widgets, custom pages, etc. They shut-down discussions regarding it and fiercely opposed it. And now, widgets are one of the most important parts of 2.0, the world is a funny place.
This isn't because they're incompetent, but because of a problem which many people fall into. Not challenging decisions made in a different age or culture and continuing them on. Today, mobile is the top thing everyone focuses on, but will that be the top priority in a decade? Likely not.
By then, mobile will just be a natural thing that everyone has, just as the back button was something we never thought about, until single page applications broke it and the web community looked for ways to fix.
People are quick to dismiss discussions about shout-boxes, but we shouldn't be thinking about the feature, but *why* people need shout-boxes. They provide a quick alternative to the traditional work-flow of frequently refreshing pages to see if there're any new posts.
This is partially alleviated by alerts, including auto-refreshing alerts, but some software like NodeBB / Discourse take it further with live topics and live alerts. Even if they aren't accepted, these ideas should at-least be explored, lest us fall into the "CMS Feature" trap again.
Discourse has quickly jumped to half of MyBB's market-share in a mere few years despite the drawbacks and sacrifices web-masters have had to make to migrate, so it's at-least worth a look.
At the end of the day, assumptions can cause disaster and thus, I will challenge them. Particularly, ones which appear to be taken as gospel without the pros and cons properly being weighed and contingency plans in play.
I sometimes make this mistake, even to this day, and I'm trying very hard to avoid falling into that trap. Unfortunately, I'm not exactly perfect myself, but if we do everything we can, then we can at-least minimise this sort of problem.
The scariest thing I've heard from a contributor is that the code-base is secondary and that we can slap a new theme on it and that people will happily contend with bugs. I realise that Stefan mentioned this as an option briefly where I didn't bat an eye at it, as it seemed too silly to ever be implemented, once again the trap of making an assumption.
I ended up in a heated debate regarding the concept, particularly with some under-appreciated issues and at the end of the day... If you could ship pretty things and get away with structural flaws, then Codoforums wouldn't have flopped so badly.
I know that the code-base might appear to be functional, but if it didn't have major fundamental flaws, then wouldn't we all be satisfied with 1.x? This wouldn't even be a debate. The MyBB Team don't push 2.0 strongly just to be difficult, in fact it would be great if that the case, but because there are some extremely problematic issues in 1.x which can't be painted over so easily.
(2017-10-08, 06:40 AM)Azah Wrote: [ -> ]...
The scariest thing I've heard from a contributor is that the code-base is secondary and that we can slap a new theme on it and that people will happily contend with bugs. I realise that Stefan mentioned this as an option briefly where I didn't bat an eye at it, as it seemed too silly to ever be implemented, once again the trap of making an assumption.
I ended up in a heated debate regarding the concept, particularly with some under-appreciated issues and at the end of the day... If you could ship pretty things and get away with structural flaws, then Codoforums wouldn't have flopped so badly.
I know that the code-base might appear to be functional, but if it didn't have major fundamental flaws, then wouldn't we all be satisfied with 1.x? This wouldn't even be a debate. The MyBB Team don't push 2.0 strongly just to be difficult, in fact it would be great if that the case, but because there are some extremely problematic issues in 1.x which can't be painted over so easily.
I don't know what point you're trying to make. Sounds like you're saying that work should be abandoned on the 1.8 series and focused on 2.0 ?
Well the end user does not know or care about the correctness of the codebase. All they care about is the look (modern looking) and that the software does what it's supposed to do, at the level of the end user, not some technical expert.
2.0 is like the proverbial bird in the bush - totally and utterly useless to the end user until it exists in beta format. Imagine spending 2 years or more developing, testing, refining 2.0 to get it to beta stage only to discover that there is no appetite for it from the community. What then ? 1.8 is what the community has now and to an extent it's a proven product. Putting a new coat of paint on 1.8 is probably the only viable option going forward.
(2017-10-08, 03:01 PM)Ashley1 Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know what point you're trying to make. Sounds like you're saying that work should be abandoned on the 1.8 series and focused on 2.0 ?
Well the end user does not know or care about the correctness of the codebase. All they care about is the look (modern looking) and that the software does what it's supposed to do, at the level of the end user, not some technical expert.
2.0 is like the proverbial bird in the bush - totally and utterly useless to the end user until it exists in beta format. Imagine spending 2 years or more developing, testing, refining 2.0 to get it to beta stage only to discover that there is no appetite for it from the community. What then ? 1.8 is what the community has now and to an extent it's a proven product. Putting a new coat of paint on 1.8 is probably the only viable option going forward.
The arguments around this issue appear to be split between quality visible to end users of MyBB forums and their administrators and effectiveness of development - the former is easier to tackle while the latter could as well reach 100% of PHP code that runs MyBB 1.8 and the script could not be realistically called stable - with modern standards in mind - until it's done. We'll be trying to achieve an acceptable balance between those in the near future, leaning toward fixing the first problem when it comes to 1.x.
To make it easier to track everyone's opinions we might add a poll that would go along the lines of:
- maintenance, security, and compatibility-friendly changes to 1.8 & development of 2.0
Current plans involving the 1.8 series support and merging medium-level improvements with reduced breaking changes.
Development of the 2.0 series would continue using modern practices.
- limited 1.x UX improvements & development of 2.0
Theme system-related changes possibly including Twig templates, implementation of common forum plugins (like alerts).
Development of the 2.0 series would continue using modern practices.
- limited 1.x UX improvements, bridging core structure changes & development of 2.0
All of the above; adding or replacing certain old parts of the code with elements that will be used in 2.0, exposing the Developer Community to new practices and using them whenever parts of the old code are being rewritten.
Development of the 2.0 series would continue using modern practices.
- full, sequential refactoring of 1.x
Rewriting subsequent 1.x code sections and releasing them, breaking down the 1.8-2.0 upgrade process to multiple 1.x upgrade points.
Development of the 2.0 series would be canceled and the repository would possibly be used as a proof-of-concept for new modules.
Compatibility-breaking changes would occur more often further down the list; similarly, the package size would likely be higher and performance drawbacks could occur more often, and upgrades potentially affecting theme, extension or core sections compatibility would be necessary in increased frequency.
This would be used for reference only given the discussion being mostly technical. Let us know if you'd like to see the options made more broad or modified.