General MyBB's Development Release 1.9

[Cedric]

While I’ve generally viewed MyBB as something of a legacy system - lacking the innovations and updates that modern platforms require - I recently stumbled across some news that may spark interest among MyBB enthusiasts. It seems that MyBB has rolled out a development version of their long-anticipated 1.9 update a while back.

The 1.9 development release isn’t a final product, and MyBB has made it clear that this version isn’t officially supported - But I suppose it's not. However, for those who are curious or simply enjoy a preview of what’s next, you can download and test it for installation purposes. Keep in mind, though, that as a development version, it's likely to come with bugs and missing features that might change before the final release.

For MyBB forum owners or those considering MyBB for future projects, this release could be a chance to see where the platform might be headed. It might also be a helpful exercise in understanding what improvements are being planned and where MyBB stands today in relation to its competitors. Although MyBB may still feel a bit outdated compared to some more advanced forum software, the 1.9 release shows they are pushing toward improvements, if slowly.

If you're interested in testing this development version, you can visit the official MyBB community forums for more details and a download link: MyBB 1.9 Development Release. Just be cautious about deploying it on a live forum; it’s best suited for testing environments at this stage.

Will this update change the perception of MyBB in the forum software space? Only time will tell. For now, 1.9 offers a chance to see what’s brewing behind the scenes.

 

[Allan]

Definitely interesting news and something that could bring them back from what I thought was extinction.

 

[Cedric]

I thought was extinction.

Indeed, the first topic in the MyBB 1.9 forum dates all the way back to January 2018. It's probably safe to say that MyBB holds the record for software in development for over six years with little to show for it. Maybe @Arantor could give us some insight on that, lol.

That said, if they could manage to push out a beta by the end of the year (even if it's a long shot), it might spark some renewed interest. Then again, it's possible the damage has already been done, as many users have moved on to other platforms. Still, it would be interesting to see if a fresh update could shift the tides.

 

[Arantor]

It's probably safe to say that MyBB holds the record for software in development for over six years with little to show for it.

SMF 2.1 started dev in summer 2011 and debuted in final form in spring 2022 with a modest upgrade that was mostly complete years before.

It looks like there have been two overall things that have pushed out what 1.9 would become - the reality isn't that there is 'little to show for it' but that what has been done isn't exactly minor.

Thing 1: major overhaul

It's been a while since I did any MyBB theming but it looks like they've shifted the entire process over to Sass rather than classic CSS, plus Twig rather than classic templates, they've completely overhauled how themes work which will be hugely interesting for all the people who've always said how easy it is to theme MyBB... I also wouldn't be surprised if plugins have been similarly revamped.

The level of change they've done is significant - as someone who's gone through a similar journey, I can attest for the level of overhaul they've done it's many, many hours of work.

Thing 2: 'when are we done'

One of the hardest parts of this whole silly sordid game of software dev is knowing 'when are we done'. How much work is required to justify the next release?

A commercial thing I did a few years ago was essentially internally referred to as "Site 2.0". The platform they were on, they were a few major versions behind (but crucially, still in support) and 2.0 was supposed to just be 'update to the latest version with a shiny new theme' which would also unroll some of the custom dev done because core had added some of the functionality in the meantime, e.g. instead of a weird-ass homebrew mobile app, there was now an official one that could be branded etc.

The key word was 'supposed to' since after we'd put in the nearly 2 years of dev to actually do the upgrade, the client suddenly felt that 'Site 2.0' wasn't a big enough upgrade to justify the 2.0 branding. Cue more dev.

SMF had a related and more practically applicable problem: in absence of a lead developer with a clear central vision for the trajectory of the project (the classical BDFL role), no-one could decide on or agree when it had enough features yet. This translated to a void of 'but is it done yet' with essentially the answer 'we don't know' because you can't know if you reached where you were going if you don't know where it is.

MyBB's plan for 1.9 seems to have been a radical overhaul of building themes and extensions, plus a responsive theme - but I can't find any clear advice on what else the release could be or should be.

This is important because while it's all very lovely seeing what they're doing (and, I'm watching SMF 3.0 go down its parallel track here) to improve the developer experience and in theory make it easier/better for third party dev to be done, there are two really huge issues with this.

Firstly, whether this change genuinely will improve the developer experience is very much up for debate. Part of what drove MyBB's appeal is that it was easy to customise... but this new setup requires some learning and adapting to port existing themes across meaning that 1.8 to 1.9 is not a trivial upgrade if it is what it seems to be.

Secondly, if you're now faced with upgrading from 1.8 to 1.9 and all you get for it is 'yay I need to redo my entire theme and all my add-ons because that's not how they're done now', you're going to ask what the point is.

Users don't like having to retread things like that even if they're objectively better for it. Even porting an existing theme from an existing version, across to a new version is usually not as good as a theme built for the new version - at least when crossing the responsive divide, because older themes tended to have more visual elements that just end up fighting with the responsive changes. It's not for nothing that if you look at SMF 1.1 themes compared to 2.0 compared to 2.1 you see much more visually interesting themes back in the day.

So for my money there needs to be a compelling reason to update, a reason to actually take the time and effort to upgrade because you'll get something out of it that doesn't just feel like it's something new - seemingly for the sake of something new.

Not to mention now you've upended all theme dev, the question in the corner about backwards compatibility starts to rear its ugly head... because there will be people who won't care about the complexities of something like responsive and just want their old theme and plugins to work - but now you're on the pain train of dealing with upgrades, and chances are some plugins that you might have relied upon before are no longer updated because their authors have moved on, a problem SMF is still grappling with (and with no apparent long term solution in sight)

I fear SMF 3.0 is in this camp having done a truly massive rework of the internal code for a difference few users will ever notice (though the devs absolutely will and now it's 'modern'). I'm not sure MyBB isn't making the same misstep here, but I could be wrong.

 

[frm]

MyBB gives me vB3 vibes, which is kind of neat.

I wouldn't mind joining a MyBB community if it were active.

 

[Cedric]

It's funny that they've been able to port the 1.9 theme design back to 1.8:
Curves UI:

Extend MyBB - Curves UI - 1.9 Concept Theme

But I must admit, this is rather looking sleek and fine!
Curves UX:

Extend MyBB - Curves UX

 

[Arantor]

MyBB always had vaguely vB-knockoff vibes which is part of why it was popular for a time.

As for porting styles, you can port a style between anything with a little time and a little skill - I was once running an SMF using a ported (premium) WordPress theme for example, it’s not wildly hard to do if you know how the platform works.

I’m not wildly sold on the new theme, reminds me of Flarum in not good ways.

 

[Allan]

SMF took forever and year to get 2.1 out and I thought it was still a little behind times when it was released. I remember MyBB going strong on the 2.0 until one day they said they were just going to move ahead with 1.9 cancel anything about 2.0 at that time. I was thinking that was odd to do a massive overhaul without having it debut as a new version.

 

[fdk1971]

I've not seen a new forum running MyBB since at least about 2015-16 or so, maybe even further back. There's still a few forums I know of that setup with MyBB and still run it to this day and are going strong, but they're all run by experienced webmasters who undoubtedly have thrown a lot of their own wisdom and knowledge into the codebase too.

I'd be interested to see what they could do that would be so drastically different from what they currently are, while not just copying the premium software packages out there like XenForo.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I really hope to see MyBB come out of its slump and release something modern.

It looks modern out of the box but when you go to the default theme on a mobile device, you're like "Oh, this is not a mobile site."

I've always enjoyed MyBB back when I used it. I hope they release something beautiful some day!