MyBB Community Forums

If you're evaluating MyBB you should be evaluating MyBB 1.6, firstly 1.6 isn't even halfway through it's product lifecycle, secondly 2.0 will be vastly different from the 1.x series in many respects so there is little point in evaluating the prospects of MyBB now based on 2.0 when 1.6 is MyBB as it currently is and will be for a significant time into the future.

If 1.6 doesn't fulfill your needs then consider another alternative and convert back to MyBB when 2.0 is released, but honestly 1.6 is still an outstanding product and I don't see many majors gaps in 1.6 that will be filled in 2.0 and can't already be filled with plugins or modifications.

On the topic of publishing a "roadmap", we will release some more information about 2.0 when the time is right, but I think a roadmap is a pretty arbitrary idea and instead I think you should look at the road behind us, anyone can publish a roadmap telling you anything, but look at our history regarding maintain a professional product:

• We have maintained a 2 year major release cycle for 1.2, 1.4 and 1.6 almost to the day. 2.0 is obviously a more substantial undertaking so the release cycle for 2.0 may be longer but as you can see, we take our release cycle seriously.
  
• Each major version has been maintained actively throughout it's whole product life cycle, 16 maintenance releases have been made thus far during 1.4's two year primary support period and 10 month legacy support period.
  
• We have a great security history, both with few vulnerabilities to start with and with the timing of security releases.
  

Hi

first of all I want to say that I appreciate it a lot, that so many people, even the deveoper team responding here so fast, constructive and in depth. Not only in this thread. I am not used to this from vb

I might sound in this thread a little bit impatient, but you have to be aware that I have followed many different discussions on the nezt on different forum-software forums and what I can see is a clear need and desire of many vb-owners for a change. Many of them are frustrated and want to have fast a soluation to be able to switch. Of course ideally with the same features, so that their usres do not have to miss something.

In another thread I mentioned that there are only a few choice I (and others) can take seriously. MyBB is one of them. But I see also that these forum-providers have all their in-house problems, which are blocking them to focus on development only.

- Xenforo has the lawsuits,
- SMF had developer bashing in the past and now a for me not so clear decison making process who decides what for future development.
- IPB is not an alternative anymore since the upgrades in the past always foced the site-owner to make complicated adjustments in the layout.
- Woltlab is not at the moment my taste, have to look closer into it.
- PhpBB3 is not serious enough for serious websites. No focus, no good support, no drive, many bugs etc. pp. I made once this mistake with phpBB3, I will not do it again.

So for many users there is a need for strong signals in the forum industry. Who wants to be what in 3 years from now? What will be your core clients for whom you try to offer your product? What do these core-clients need in the future?

vb was for a long time the industry standard not by accident. There was a reason for it. In the features and in the way how they communicated with their clients about their plans. Now vb is kind of dead. They changed their behaviour, clients are leaving. Evene those who were willing to try vb 4 at the beginning.

I do not think that there are tons a features a forum software needs to have. I do think vb 3.86 has probably already all of them. And I do not think that it is possible to include every wish of all users in the code. This is why a professional maintained plugin system & community is very important. It is the same like with Apple iphone/Ipad and the apps. The hardware is the core like myBB. You can do 90% of the stuff you need with this. But the whole story starts to "sing", if you have a huge choice of apps. Those are the plugins. But it needs to be professionally supported. I.e. with one central place to download and test them incl. support questions. With an own url. And it is totally fine that some of tehm cost something.

But back to the question of the roadmap. A 2 year cycle is quite long if that means that only every 2 years new features get into the core if I look at the current status of the core features (i.e. bulk movements of postings). This changes of course if the "mandatory" features to manage eficiently a forum are all already implemented. It does not make sense to have shorter cycles just for the sake of beeing shorter

To give an example: I do not feel any need in vb 3.86 to have more features in the core. In this regard it is pretty much perfect. The mod/Plugin community is big enough for more special needs. But vb 3.86 will not be working in 2-3 years from now because of new then to be detected security wholes, compatibility problems etc.

How is this with myBB: Are new features added only in the 1.x upgrades or also in the 1.xx versions?

And why do you think that something fundamentally has to change with version 2? What kind of changes are in your mind to give an example for a non-techi without promising that this will be in version 2?

Thanks

(2011-05-28, 07:28 AM)charly5 Wrote: [ -> ]How is this with myBB: Are new features added only in the 1.x upgrades or also in the 1.xx versions?

We don't plan to add features to 1.6.x but there may be some improvements. I really don't see an important feature missing, you can use plugins for special needs.

(2011-05-28, 07:28 AM)charly5 Wrote: [ -> ]And why do you think that something fundamentally has to change with version 2? What kind of changes are in your mind to give an example for a non-techi without promising that this will be in version 2?

MyBB 2 will have a completely new codebase (MVC) and a new design.

(2011-05-28, 07:28 AM)charly5 Wrote: [ -> ]How is this with myBB: Are new features added only in the 1.x upgrades or also in the 1.xx versions?

MyBB is like XenForo or whatnot in that the Z release in a x.y.Z does not introduce new features but usually is more stable than the previous version. That also means that MyBB is less buggy, than, say, vBulletin.