MyBB Community Forums

(2020-03-15, 10:00 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]I'm considering forking 1.8x rather than allowing the project to die. I already have a ton of amazing alterations to MyBB that would be base for a fork.  It's not set in stone but I'm watching and waiting to see what MyBB does.  I don't want the burden but I care enough and I see a need.

Just read this thread from 27 months ago.
https://community.mybb.com/thread-214721.html

Everyone respects MyBB team, we understand what's involved in development.  It is not easy.  But at some point you must recognize that the needs of the community are not being met.  What is being done, just ain't good enough.

Go ahead and start forking MyBB 1.8.xx. Why wait?
Plus, you have a team for your website, so you have the time and resources to pull this off.

If you are planning to watch to see what MyBB does, I think you might get more excitement watching grass grow in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

I had been (and so have others) waiting on the release of MyBB 1.9.xx for almost 2 years... it got to the point that if my online business is to survive, I had to move onto a different forum platform. I didn't want to do it, but I was left with no choice.

Now that I am almost done with the total revamp of my current website, I do see great possibilities, I couldn't do that if I had stayed with MyBB.

It's not a knock on MyBB forum software of in by itself, it's a knock on the 'needs of the community' that were not being met by the MyBB developers, especially in my situation.

Bottom line, the points you made your previous post is on-target, however, I doubt that this will entice the MyBB team to get going before the 'needs of the community' are far too great for MyBB forum software to catch up.

(2020-03-18, 09:53 PM)andrewjs18 Wrote: [ -> ]We've had some discussions about how to speed along development and think we may have came up with a pretty decent solution...more details to follow shortly, likely from Euan or devilshakerz.

@labrocca, someone from the dev team may be in contact soon enough.

Any news on this?

I know that this has been suggested many, many times. I will probably get shot down for suggesting it yet again, but I truly think it would make a difference. 

What if we, as a community, made a responsive default theme that was specifically made to be free for developers to extend and redistribute? I do not consider myself a theme designer by any means. I have designed three (one of which is in use on my website today), so I would still be willing to contribute with what I could.

There are so, so many people in the community that want badly to contribute to MyBB. We work together on plugins and integrate them nicely. The only other software that I've seen that is this unified with its developer community is Drupal. We know how to work together and integrate our plugins with other plugins to benefit the community (just look at myalerts, or DVZ's plugins). There generally aren't dozens of plugins that do the same thing. We develop one good one, and we integrate everything else with it. I've always been very impressed with the MyBB way of developing extensions and designs. 

That being said, until the rebase is complete for the 1.9 release, we can't really do much in the way of 1.9. With the new template engine, it's going to introduce a lot of breaking changes for plugins. There are still a lot of very good reasons to use MyBB 1.8, but it seems like there are simple things that are a bit of a turn off for some new forum administrators. They see phpBB has alerts and a responsive theme. They look at MyBB and it doesn't, and they choose phpBB because it seems easier out of the box.

But it goes beyond the major things aforementioned. Anecdotally, perhaps the single biggest thing I see on various admin forums is that people notice the post code error on registrations and logins. I see more threads on this than I see on everything else for MyBB combined. It's a non-issue for themes that are updated, but there are only a handful of good, popular responsive themes for MyBB right now. People very frequently use outdated ones for that reason. 

People with no prior experience with MyBB who find an older theme that they like are usually a little unprepared for the error. Even something small such as having a built in one-click preg-replacer to fix these automatically would go a LONG way towards easing new users' concerns regarding MyBB. 

All of this is to say that I don't think we're out of steam on 1.8. If we, as a community, give up on 1.8, there will not be much left of the community to contribute to 1.9. The developers are working very hard right now (and are making some very deep changes to MyBB), but it may not be complete any time soon. It's open source software and they're doing it for free. For those of us that are waiting (not just on the release, but on the rebase so that we can contribute), I worry that we're looking for a magic solution in 1.9 right now. We can still make good themes. We can make good, modernized plugins. I would hate to see the developer community dwindle in the meantime. 

Just my humble opinion. 

+1, I agree!

Hi,

another unpopular opinion (mine)

(2020-03-30, 10:30 PM)Darth Apple Wrote: [ -> ]But it goes beyond the major things aforementioned. Anecdotally, perhaps the single biggest thing I see on various admin forums is that people notice the post code error on registrations and logins. I see more threads on this than I see on everything else for MyBB combined. It's a non-issue for themes that are updated, but there are only a handful of good, popular responsive themes for MyBB right now. People very frequently use outdated ones for that reason. 

People with no prior experience with MyBB who find an older theme that they like are usually a little unprepared for the error. Even something small such as having a built in one-click preg-replacer to fix these automatically would go a LONG way towards easing new users' concerns regarding MyBB. 

What it must be done to avoid problems said by Darth Apple in the quoted text, it's to remove themes that are not updated to last version of MyBB. PERIOD. Create a section of "Old 1.8 Themes" or similar, and warn users that "if you use it you could have problems in your forum".

If I'm a new MyBB user and I see in the oficial web page that this theme of 2014!!! it's in the download list, I'll install it, and of course sooner or later I'll have problems, and I'll say MyBB sucks if anyone ask me.

Thanks Odin that people in this forum it's very competent (staff & not staff), but for a noob in MyBB maybe it's a no-no.

And the plugins should be revised as well...

FYI, I believe the new theme for 1.9 is essentially done.

(2020-03-31, 08:30 AM)NoRules Wrote: [ -> ]If I'm a new MyBB user and I see in the oficial web page that this theme of 2014!!! it's in the download list, I'll install it, and of course sooner or later I'll have problems, and I'll say MyBB sucks if anyone ask me.

I checked these two pages and I have two suggestions to improve this:

1. Stop allowing users to select problematic version compatibilities like "1.8.x". Force specific version compatibilities like "1.8.0, 1.8.1, 1.8.2".
   
2. Add a review system to the mods section. Store libraries usually add a "review" section were people can share their experiences, I found this rather usefull myself because you can get a forecast of what your experience installing a plugin or theme could get to be.
   

I think these would help.

Regarding having a message saying "this theme isn't compatible..." and so forth, we technically already do, if I recall? But almost everyone ignores it because 90% of the time, jumping to 1.8.21 to 1.8.22 on an incompatible theme doesn't have any issues. It's jumping from 1.8.15 to 1.8.22 (and that sort of thing in general) that causes issues.

I suppose my concern with an "old themes" section is that the majority of theme authors don't really update their themes ASAP when a new release comes out. Most of the popular, well-maintaind ones do, but MyBB updates sometimes resolve severe security issues. If people can't even install a theme where the developer hasn't changed the compatibility yet, there might not be as much incentive for people to run critical MyBB updates.

That said, I suppose we could do something similar to Wordpress (along similar lines). They have a system in place that warns users if a plugin is being installed on a version of Wordpress that is more than three releases behind. It's an extra warning that just says "hey, we'll let you install this, but this might not work. Seriously. It probably won't work."

With plugins, I've noticed that there are fewer breaking changes it seems. There are a wealth of plugins that were made for 1.8.0 that still work perfectly for 1.8.22. Heck, there are some (wouldn't say most, but some) plugins that were made for 1.6 that work perfectly even today, just with the compatibility line change. There are of course a decent number that don't as well (MyProfile being one of the main ones that gets mentioned most often). But it seems that they break less often than themes when it comes to new updates for MyBB.

I also like the review section as mentioned by @Omar. I'd definitely use it.

@NoRules: I agree. Those of us who have been around know not to use a theme from 2014, but a new MyBB user won't be prepared for the issues that it can cause to do so.

I think we can do our part to try to avoid as many breaking changes to themes as possible as well. Major things like post code issues could benefit from a third party plugin that preg_replaces the affected templates. (Thought about doing this one if I find the time). That way, at least for critical issues, there'd be some sort of one-click solution for non-theme developers to fix their forums. The problem is that something of this sort would not be beneficial if it wasn't in core. If people knew enough about MyBB to find the plugin, they'd probably find it easier just to fix it manually.

I have seen in some blogs. The last update was 6 months ago, are you sure you want to download it ?. We can show such a notice in red or a pop up when someone tries to download it. Since the MyBB team maintains the extend section, it will work on all themes and plugins based on the last update date.

Quote:All of this is to say that I don't think we're out of steam on 1.8.

I don't either. Just need a default responsive theme and 1.8x is ready to go. Plugins would just need to adjust for template changes. That's what I was hoping 1.9x would be but it's just another attempt to add features no one cares about such as Twig and a different mailer.

Quote:The developers are working very hard right now...

Do you check the Github? When I look there isn't that much activity.

Quote:Stop allowing users to select problematic version compatibilities like "1.8.x". Force specific version compatibilities like "1.8.0, 1.8.1, 1.8.2".

Minor issue.

Quote:Add a review system to the mods section. Store libraries usually add a "review" section were people can share their experiences, I found this rather usefull myself because you can get a forecast of what your experience installing a plugin or theme could get to be.

Seems off the mark for what the community needs which is an immediate responsive design. Any effort anywhere else is a waste of time imho.