[Darth-Apple]

MyBB 1.8 Beta 3 was just released today. That means that the final release for 1.8 is very, very close, so there isn't a whole lot of time to waste at this point as far as prep. Of course it's not imperative that a forum be upgraded immediately, but I don't want to delay too much considering MyBB 1.8 adds some much needed improvements, and I'm beyond excited for it. They didn't exactly overhaul anything, but 1.8 is full of a lot of neat changes that add plenty of minor feature additions and modernize things quite a bit, so it's definitely going to be a great update for the community.

As for what's planned, I'm actually going to try hard not to do a total theme overhaul again. I've done enough of those already, and have probably annoyed you guys a few times in the process. Of course with 1.8 having a number of improvements built in, the forum, once converted, will also carry some of those improvements. I will have to port our current theme to 1.8 from scratch, so not everything will be ported perfectly. At this point, if all goes well, you can expect a slightly polished and improved version of our current design. Some major plugin cleanup will take place as well to bring more stability to the forums also. (If you're annoyed with the status updates bugs or the fact that the number of alerts displays in the forum title with no alerts link, this may be good news for you! )

Anyway, what would you like to see for Makestation? All suggestions regarding our conversion to MyBB 1.8 will be read and considered! Also, this thread will serve as the official questions thread as prep moves on. I obviously don't know the full details yet since they haven't released MyBB 1.8 officially yet, but prep work has begun.

-Darth

[Acko]

Don't have anything to suggest, but I'd like to say you've been doing a good job anyways!

[Darth-Apple]

Don't have anything to suggest, but I'd like to say you've been doing a good job anyways!

Don't be spilling the beans

[CapTon]

Spill the beans .

[Acko]

Nah, we don't need any more beans to be spilled, at least not yet

[CapTon]

Hehe okay.

[Darth-Apple]

Rebuilding our theme with 1.8 as a base has been interesting. I can say it will look and feel a little more modern, which I'm excited about. I'm also in the middle of some plugin development that will improve the header announcements/spotlight of the hour functionality, and I'll probably get to work on a much improved status updates plugin soon as well.

The work thus far isn't screenshot ready yet, but it is coming along nicely.

[CapTon]

Woohoo! Modern .

[Darth-Apple]

This is a much more simplified concept of some of the ideas Submatrix was initially going to implement. I am mostly done with a port of the current Submatrix theme, but due to sidebar plugins and other such implementations for the current MS that aren't a part of the theme directly, implementing it for 1.8 has been challenging.

What are your thoughts on the more simplified preview? This is a test concept I pulled together in about two hours, so it's definitely not complete or final.

[CapTon]

It looks nice very nice. You're doing an awesome job.

[Darth-Apple]

MyBB 1.8 has been released, so work is going to get MS upgraded within 1-2 weeks. Here is preview #2 of the theme. I'm still experimenting quite a bit with it, but it has officially been "ported" to the stable release of 1.8. Turns out they changed more between beta 3 and the final release than I was expecting.



The status updates plugin has received some progress as well, and is most of the way ready.

[Electric2Shock]

Not bad. I was expecting more in the header section, however.

[Darth-Apple]

The header has been my main area of trouble at this point. I've been experimenting with other ideas and have an alternative header concept I might end up trying. There will probably be a few gradients added as well, although the goal for this version is to look modern while staying relatively simple.

The status updates plugin is still holding me up on finishing preparations for the upgrade here. I'm working on it today and my goal is to upgrade by next Tuesday. I've already upgraded chatcave's forum, and the upgrade process is less complicated than I was expecting.

[Darth-Apple]

I've done a lot of work on the header in general to make it look more interesting. I ended up making a header that was pretty similar to the one we're using now. It looks more modern, but the primary differences will be that the toolbar will be more prominent and that the actual page and breadcrumbs will be a little more integrated with the header itself.

Overall, the theme has been simplified somewhat to use fewer shades of blue and will also feature a wider page width. I had originally intended to upgrade MS tomorrow, but I can never seem to stick with my plans. It looks like it will be another week or so because I still have to finish some plugins as well.

I suppose this is the price you pay for needing to be bleeding edge about everything. The upgrade will be great though, definitely will make the forum a lot easier on the eyes.

[Clayton]

Nice work, I look forward to it.

[Darth-Apple]

I think I've pretty much decided to wait until 1.8.1 to upgrade considering how buggy 1.8.0 is. I'm pretty tied up developing tons of plugins for MyBB anyway. In the meantime, it gives us a little more time to really let our current MyBB 1.6.x design reach its full glory.

I need to start investing more time in keeping this place active. I've been a bit busy over the past few weeks, in case that isn't blatantly obvious by my activity here.

[Clayton]

Sounds like the smarter way to do things. I can tell you don't love us here anymore. #shunned

[Darth-Apple]

Haha no, lol. I've just been very busy. It's that time for me to change jobs and industries as well, so I haven't had a lot of spare time lately.

Worry not, a ton of work for the site has been going on behind the scenes. The new design continues to become more polished and I'm working on features and what not. Not that the features are super important, but hey, we use so many custom features that people seem to like here, I feel at least some should be a part of the upgraded MS.

The upgrade essentially adds and fixes a lot that makes the forum a little more user friendly. For example, you won't be able to rate your own threads, see "new reply" buttons for threads you can't reply to, etc. It adds theme switchers, PM quick replies, default avatars, better reputation systems, and much improved buddy lists as well. Overall, it will be much more coherent and user friendly in a number of ways.