[Guardian]

75 million websites can't be wrong

They can, they are.

What's your preference then?

[campingrhino]

Bit unrelated but any of you had a look at Flarum? It's still in alpha but it's started to be adopted by some larger communities.

[Darth-Apple]

We’ve considered flarum, discourse, and otherwise. They would work well for a lot of communities, but we have had some concerns as to whether or not it will fit well with the wide variety of content and formats that we use here. On one hand, they are modernized forum softwares and that’s great. But on the other hand, they just sort of feel like they are “missing something” somewhere in terms of running a community on them. That said, they run a lot of successful communities, so it depends.

it’s still on the table. It could be a great option if we integrated it with a CMS to handle more advanced features and homepage-like content.

[s3_gunzel]

What's your preference then?

Honestly, I'd stick it out. There's no reason why 1.8 is inherently bad. And then you can eventually upgrade to 1.9, or just move to phpBB, they seem to have decent momentum.

[tc4me]

Hy folks, I take up the topic of MyBB 1.9 or higher, my thoughts about it or what makes me wonder about it, what happens to all the plugins? As I see the new version, it will not be possible to adapt the plugins. Some developers, including Darth, will think about another platform, which is already up to date, and will only be further developed, to switch to this at some point and to do without Mybb entirely.

Because staying on the current version becomes a risk security at some point, or it will still run on the PHP and SQL version .. etc. how do you see the situation?

[Kyng]

Hy folks, I take up the topic of MyBB 1.9 or higher, my thoughts about it or what makes me wonder about it, what happens to all the plugins? As I see the new version, it will not be possible to adapt the plugins. Some developers, including Darth, will think about another platform, which is already up to date, and will only be further developed, to switch to this at some point and to do without Mybb entirely.

Because staying on the current version becomes a risk security at some point, or it will still run on the PHP and SQL version .. etc. how do you see the situation?

Well, I don't think it'll be an immediate security risk. Once 1.9 is released, I expect 1.8 will continue to be maintained and kept secure for at least a year. That should give ample time for most of the popular plugins to be converted to 1.9  .

[Darth-Apple]

Hy folks, I take up the topic of MyBB 1.9 or higher, my thoughts about it or what makes me wonder about it, what happens to all the plugins? As I see the new version, it will not be possible to adapt the plugins. Some developers, including Darth, will think about another platform, which is already up to date, and will only be further developed, to switch to this at some point and to do without Mybb entirely.

Because staying on the current version becomes a risk security at some point, or it will still run on the PHP and SQL version .. etc. how do you see the situation?

Well, I don't think it'll be an immediate security risk. Once 1.9 is released, I expect 1.8 will continue to be maintained and kept secure for at least a year. That should give ample time for most of the popular plugins to be converted to 1.9  .

Well said. This is at least what they have said they will do this time around. In the past, they didn't, but this is a very different release. (1.6 was quickly EOL-ed once 1.8 came out, but 1.8 -> 1.9 is a much bigger jump so I assume they will make good on their word. I have no doubt they will continue to support 1.8 at least for a little while). 

That said, I myself am very concerned about the state of this software. It's sad because it's truly a one-of-a-kind solution. It is the only software that is so customizable that it can easily be made to look and feel like IPB or Xenforo or another paid solution. No other free software even gets close. But there are issues with it out of the box that are nowadays turning a lot of users away (namely responsiveness, notifications, the dated theme, etc). MyBB has sadly lost a lot of steam. 

It's sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy in a sense. They're losing users, meaning that developers (both official devs and plugin/theme devs) are also leaving. This means that the software is changing more slowly and therefore they lose more users in the process. I worry that 1.9 will have to have a very high-profile, enthusiastic release to really turn that around. I sincerely hope that they can pull it off, I deeply hope that they are not running out of time, but they seem to still be stagnant development wise. They aren't much further ahead today than they were in 2017-2018. This time last year, I think most of us were very confident that 1.9 was still in the pipeline. Now, I'm seeing a lot of people genuinely ask the question: Is MyBB going to have a future?

If it were up to me, I'd make a 1.8.25 release with a default responsive theme and a modernized look, right out of the box. Every single resource would be directed towards this and everything else would be put on the back burner. This would allow every theme from here on out to be responsive, which would address the single biggest weakness of the MyBB platform. In doing so, they would attract more users, and therefore more developers and more help torwards finishing 1.9.

Unfortunately, the devs have spoken against this idea in the past, despite very passionate endorsements from some high-profile forums (including Labrocca from HF). If I recall, Labrocca even offered to fully fund this and pay a full-time, professional developer to accomplish it. From what I understand, they disagreed on the roadmap and didn't feel that a simple, responsive update of 1.8 should be in the pipeline. The idea ended up never coming to fruition, and a lot of people attacked Labrocca very fiercely for ever suggesting it.

[tc4me]

Good morning, that's exactly how I see it! I think Mybb should just continue to develop this version, a MyBB 1.8.25 or 1.8.xx and that actually only in relation to a responsive theme, because that would appeal to many developers and users

[Darth-Apple]

Good morning, that's exactly how I see it! I think Mybb should just continue to develop this version, a MyBB 1.8.25 or 1.8.xx and that actually only in relation to a responsive theme, because that would appeal to many developers and users

I agree 100% here. Well said.

[Kyng]

Yeah... about MyBB's future (and whether it has one), there's not a lot I can say that isn't just repeating myself from the last time the subject came up here. However, the more time goes on, the less optimistic I get .

As for this whole "MyBB 1.8.25 with responsive default theme" thing, I have to admit I'm pretty skeptical. They'd have had to completely re-do the templates, and that would have broken a lot of plugins. Sure, I got most of them working on my own board (which has a responsive default theme), but it took a fair amount of tinkering even for relatively simple plugins. I think it would end up becoming a de facto "1.9" - and I can see a lot of people sticking with 1.8.24 (either because they dislike the new responsive theme or because the plugins aren't yet stable or updated). These users wouldn't want to forgo future bug fixes and security updates, so I can see there being a lot of pressure on the MyBB developers to maintain a separate "1.8.24a/b/c/etc." branch for these people.

Perhaps they bit off more than they could chew by going the full "1.9" route; however, the alternative doesn't sound very easy either.

[s3_gunzel]

Perhaps they bit off more than they could chew by going the full "1.9" route; however, the alternative doesn't sound very easy either.

1.9 is a necessary update to MyBB. It needs to get with the 21st century.

[tc4me]

Quote MyBB:


Timeframe

It is planned that 1.9.0 will be available at least as a beta verison within the first quarter (Q1) of 2018, though obviously the sooner the better. We welcome any contributions to the effort that people can provide. For example, if you're used to working on Twig, you can follow the below process:

Fork the MyBB repository to your GitHub branch.

Create a new branch based upon
develop/1.9

Convert a template to Twig, and test it locally.

Create a Pull Request to the MyBB repository against the
develop/1.9
branch.

The team will review and merge the PR, knocking another template off the list to convert!


###############################################


I think Mybb is completely lost, they are desperately trying to complete the 1.9 instead of the 2.0 announced years ago since 2018. The 1.9 is always behind due to global dynamics, the rapid further development of the PHP .. CSS programming language, and the increasingly important security in the network. And when it comes to freeware that is dependent on volunteers who only have time when and only then, I no longer believe that there will be a Mybb 1.9 adapted to the times at some point. My tip to mybb would be to try to improve the 1.8.xx only in the most important areas, a standard responsive theme, security standards, and it is good, the speed of the system is enough every day

lg Tc4me

[Darth-Apple]

Yeah... about MyBB's future (and whether it has one), there's not a lot I can say that isn't just repeating myself from the last time the subject came up here. However, the more time goes on, the less optimistic I get .

As for this whole "MyBB 1.8.25 with responsive default theme" thing, I have to admit I'm pretty skeptical. They'd have had to completely re-do the templates, and that would have broken a lot of plugins. Sure, I got most of them working on my own board (which has a responsive default theme), but it took a fair amount of tinkering even for relatively simple plugins. I think it would end up becoming a de facto "1.9" - and I can see a lot of people sticking with 1.8.24 (either because they dislike the new responsive theme or because the plugins aren't yet stable or updated). These users wouldn't want to forgo future bug fixes and security updates, so I can see there being a lot of pressure on the MyBB developers to maintain a separate "1.8.24a/b/c/etc." branch for these people.

Perhaps they bit off more than they could chew by going the full "1.9" route; however, the alternative doesn't sound very easy either.

That's a very good point. I could see this precise problem becoming an issue if they went this route. It would be a disaster if compatibility became fragmented across different 1.8.x releases.

One viable solution would be to include two themes by default. The current would remain the default, per se, but a new, fully responsive theme could be included to have bleeding edge mobile responsiveness and modernization. It would achieve broad compatibility while still allowing theme developers to create a plethora of responsive designs based on a mobile-friendly default.

There has been talk of doing a community-made responsive design as a "skeleton theme" in the past. Something of this sort could be a very good solution.

[Kyng]

Perhaps they bit off more than they could chew by going the full "1.9" route; however, the alternative doesn't sound very easy either.

1.9 is a necessary update to MyBB. It needs to get with the 21st century.

Yeah, I certainly agree with that. (Indeed, the entire point of my post was that I don't see a viable alternative to going the "1.9" route - and, in particular, about how I don't consider the "responsive 1.8.25" route to be viable)

I just hope MyBB has the resources to make it happen.