ModernBB 3.4 “Neon” now available

A month ago, we where releasing ModernBB 3.3 to you. And guess what, we’ve got a new update ready for you! This time, it’s ModernBB 3.4, which brings you some nice improvements, better security, a new editor and more. As always, the download is available at our home- and download-page. Make a backup before updating! So… what’s new?

A new editor: because the TinyMCE editor didn’t work very well, we’re replacing it with CKEditor. The result is a revised interface, improved abbilities and a much better working editor!
Parser: the parser has been given an update, we dropped support for heading levels, only leaving 1 intact, we removed inline code and inline quotes and alignment options. We hope this will using ModernBB easier and better, you’re users can’t make a mess of their posts anymore.
Cookie bar: disabled by default, the cookie bar warns users that ModernBB creates cookies on their PC. The cookie bar is only visible for guests and only when this feature is enabled.
More Backstage colors: last update, we redesigned the Backstage and improved our Accent function, adding 4 colors for you to choose from, red, yellow, green and the default ModernBB blue. In this update, we’ve improved the interface of this option and also added 8 new colors to the mix for you to personalise your Backstage.
Avatars in navbar: the current user’s avatar is now displayed in the navigation bar.
Embedding videos: embedding videos now behaves different, first of all, the default dimensions for an embedded video are changed to match modern standards, users will not be able to set their own size. In the Backstage, we’ve added 2 new options for you to change the default size of embedded videos.
Less code: we’ve reduced the amount of code in the ModernBB package, one major step in this was the removal of Magic, Happy, Luna, Pinkie and Shy as build-in themes, no worries, you can download them from our style page in the “Random styles” pack! The ModernBB 3.4 package is 65% smaller then the ModernBB 3.3 package! We still provide a CDN-less version on our download page, under the new CDN-less-release table. Only ModernBB 3.4 and 3.5 will have CDN-less versions, starting from ModernBB 3.6, we will no longer provide CDN-less versions.
And more…
Bugfixes: and of course, there are the usual bugfixes in this release.

Up next

And now the big question everyone has: what’s next? Obsious, isn’t it? 3.4.1, 3.5 and 4.0 of course! Well… not exactly. While development of 3.4.1 will kick off starting today. I will wait a little bit with ModernBB 3.5. In fact, I’m moving it to a 3-weekly release scheme for ModernBB 3.4. So in 3 weeks, you can find yourself with ModernBB 3.4.1. Whatever we have ready for you by then, will be shipped. Since I’m going on a break for 10 days during that time, don’t expect to much from 3.4.1. Future updates like 3.4.2 and 3.4.3 will have some nice improvements, through. What kind of stuff can you expect from us in those small updates?

Optimalizations: just like the main release, we will be improving our code!
Social media in profile: we are planning to give the list of social media in the profile an update, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, etc. aren’t used that much anymore, instead, Facebook and Twitter will join the fun.
Other small feature updates
Bugfixes, as usual…

Except for ModernBB 3.4.1, I’ll also continue my work on Luna. It’s a very buggy thing right now, and you can’t even post a post. So yeah, there is a lot of work to be done… But we’re making progress, and that’s a good thing. I’ll post an announcement about Luna later the summer.

As you might know, the ModernBB.be forums where damaged and down during the 26-27 June periode due to a bug in ModernBB 3.4 RC1, the result isn’t that dramatical: our forums are back online, no data was lost. Except that we did lose our style. We will update the ModernBB Forums to be integrated with our main website in the near future (within 3 days).

Well, I hope all of you will enjoy this ModernBB update! I want to say thank you for everyone who worked with me on this release, it was awesome, I hope all of you contribute to the next ModernBB milestones too! ModernBB 3.4.1 will be a small feature release with the required bug fixes and small improvements (kind of like ModernBB 3.3.1). Anyway, I’m off! Enjoy this new ModernBB, enjoy our new website and see you next time!

ModernBB 3.3 “Vanellope” now available

ModernBB 3.3 “Vanellope” now available – Luna

I’m pleased to announce the release of ModernBB 3.3. Today, you can download this new version of ModernBB and use it! ModernBB 3.3 comes with a brand new Backstage and style system and other improvements. As always, you can find the download in the download section in our menu.

Improved style system: ModernBB 3.3 comes with a brand new styling system, not only the way styles are saved has been improved, but styles are now able to change much more then before. For example: you can change the whole view of the user list if you want, simply with a style, and still be able to upgrade to ModernBB 3.4 later on, without loosing anything.
New Backstage: We’ve redesigned our Backstage, not only does it have a nice new color, but it contains also some usability improvements, when searching for users, the result you’re hovering above with the cursor will light up. Text fields that support HTML now also have a WYSIWYG editor. Plugin creators now can use all available Bootstrap features. In your profile, we added an option to change the color of the Backstage to red, green, yellow or ModernBB blue.
New styles: We also extended the amount of default styles with 3 new styles: Luna, Pinkie and Shy. Those 3 new styles are available in the download. The other 6 styles have been updated to support this version of ModernBB too.
Language improvements: Translating ModernBB is now easier too. We’ve removed all mail templates and replaced them with the already existing language file. A lot of sentence in the language file also have been shortened.
And more: There is a lot more too ModernBB 3.3 then this, through those are the large improvements, everything else is basicaly small changes that makes your experience much better. Idem dito for the 27 bugfixes.

I want to say thanks to everyone who worked on this ModernBB release, and I hope I see all of you next time too! Yesterday, we kicked of development of ModernBB 3.4… and 4.0 (well, we where working on that version since mid May, through development started officialy yesterday)! More news on both releases will follow in the future. However, we’re planning to release ModernBB 3.4 very soon as we are planning to tackle a serious issue with ModernBB in this release, we might even cancel ModernBB 3.3.1 and merge it with 3.4 instead (just like what we did with ModernBB 3.0 and 3.1). Also, I want to thank everyone who download our software, as we hitted the 5.000 download mark today.

ModernBB 3.2 “Mellow” now available

Yesterday, we released the ModernBB 3.2 beta, well… I’m pleased to announce, the availablitiy of ModernBB 3.2! Between ModernBB 3.2 beta and 3.2.0, we’ve fixed a couple of additional issues. It’s recommended to upgrade, of course. But be sure to have a backup of your data. What’s new in ModernBB 3.2, you ask?

Front-end, reimagend: ModernBB 3.2 contains a brand new front-end! The profile? New. The forum view? New. The help page? New. The user list? New. The only thing that didn’t change is the topic view, as it was already revamped in ModernBB 3.1. The new interface is ment to be more content focussed and will give you and your forum users a brand new and awesome experience.
First run: First run is a brand new feature in ModernBB 3.2. It will show a nice message on top of your forums index page that welcomes new users and gives links to common first run tasks, like uploading an avatar, user settings, etc. When you upgrade, your current users will get to see this message too. Guests also see this message, for them, it’s permanent, unless you disable this feature for guests in the settings in the Backstage.
A Magic and Happy family of Awesome Random styles that are Radical updated to give a Kind look: in other words: we gave Randomness, Awesomeness, Radicalness and Kindness an updated look and renamed them to Random, Awesom, Radical and Kind. Why the rename? Because 2 new styles joined in: Magic and Happy. Through we have a word like Happy with -ness (happieness), we don’t have one for Magic, so here it is. I think you will like our new styles.
Posted: When an user post in a topic, and this feature is enabled in the Backstage, a “Posted” label will appear in front of the topic.
More help is better help: since the introduction of the WYSIWYG editor in ModernBB 3.0 (which will be updated in 3.3), the help page became kind of useless (more useless then it already was). So, we updated it with shiny new content.
Redirections without waiting: When you, or your users, are redirected, no matter where they are (Backstage or front-end), you won’t see any redirect screen anymore.
Login: This is important for forums that are very old (PunBB 1.2 and prior), because users that ever since didn’t log in, won’t be able to login anymore. We’ve removed some legacy code that allowed very old accounts to log in. We don’t expect this to be a problem, as those users probably wouldn’t return anyway (unless you’re still running PunBB 1.2, but then again, you can’t update to ModernBB 3.2, you’ll first have to update to something higher then FluxBB 1.5 and lower then ModernBB 3.0).
Language files: We’ve checked our language files and removed all lines we didn’t use anymore, or everything that was double (and that’s a lot, we removed 20% of the files content). Translators will get it much easier to translate ModernBB now, and I’m planning to do so. People in Belgium and the Netherlands can look forward to a Dutch translation of ModernBB in the near future. I’ll also start up an account for ModernBB at a service to translate it in more languages. Something else we did with language files is that they now contain default settings for date and time notation.
General code base cleanup: the language files where part of our code base cleanup, just like the profile, login and our default styles, did we remove a lot of useless code. Over 1400 lines of code have been removed.
Bugfixes, bugfixes and even more bugfixes.

ModernBB 3.2 is the result of 3 weeks of hard work, with a total of 142 commits and some great help from other people. That “great help from other people” will become even more clear with ModernBB 3.3. Because Oldhobbyist, our newest addition to the develop team, is working to separate the logic from the content in the ModernBB Core. Style creators can expect an aweful lot of nice new things in ModernBB 3.3. For plugin creators, some new stuff is coming to with those changes. For fans of the Backstage: this is our main next focus point of ModernBB 3.3, you will get to see a brand new design. And we will do some serious improvements to the UX. Stay tuned!

ModernBB 3.1 “Mellow” now available

Perhaps it is the first day of April, but I’m not joking when I say that I’m very happy to announce the availability of ModernBB 3.1, so soon after 3.0. We didn’t even got the time to build a 3.0.1 (which isn’t coming anyway). ModernBB 3.1 “Mellow” will give you an Improved experience in the topic view and navbar.

This update isn’t that big, so I’m going very shortly over the new stuff… Here’s a link. As always, you can find the download on our download page, be sure to make a back-up before you update.

Through I’ve got something other to tell you. We will continou developing ModernBB 3.2, for this update, which will be a release of the same size as 3.1, and thus is still named “Mellow”, we’ve planned to improve the experience on the user list, profile (especially the profile) and help page. You can expect us to release this update in May our June. Also, this month, we will move Vanellope to a branch inside the ModernBB repository and push all changes we made.

ModernBB 3.0 “Odd” now available

We’re three and a half month after the release of ModernBB 2.2, and we have a new major update ready for you! I’m proud to announce the availability of ModernBB 3.0. As always, you can find the latest version of ModernBB at our download page!

What’s new?

New Backstage: The Backstage design has been Improved to be more clear, more structured and more awesome. Give it your own touch with a new setting in your profile, allowing you to change the accent color.
Reset: you can now reset your forum with soft and hard reset!
Kindness and friends: Kindness has returned. The style that was available for ModernBB 2.0 but was removed in 2.1 is back. The other 3 styles also had some major improvements.
WYSIWYG: The editor has been replaced with a brand new one, the new TinyMCE based editor allows you to see what you’re going to post.
New parser abilities: The parser is now capable of understanding all h1 – h6 tags and a new c-tag, wich allows to use inline code.
New components: Bootstrap and jQuery have been updated to the latest release and TinyMCE is a new component in the software (causing it to be rather big than usual).
Many, many more…

Of course, we recommend you to update to the latest version of ModernBB. It’s important to make a backup before you update your forums to ModernBB 3.0. Note that ModernBB 3.0 requires PHP 5.1 and a database running MySQL 5.0 or higher or SQLite 2.

ModernBB 2.1.0 “Zoe” now available

Just less then a month after the release of ModernBB 2.0, we are proud to announce the availability of ModernBB 2.1.0! ModernBB 2.1 is a small update upon ModernBB 2.0, however, it’s important to stay up-to-date, especialy since this release fixes lots of bugs. As always, you can download this version on our download page. Anyway, let’s introduce ModernBB 2.1 to you.