ModernBB 3.4 Release Candidate now available

I am happy to announce the availability of ModernBB 3.4 Release Candidate. Todays version contains some major changes in both Backstage as Mainstage. As always, we recommend you to not use this version in a productive environment as it is still an unstable release (through we call it an RC). This is a great version to start testing with through.

ModernBB 3.4 contains some major changes to the code base. In fact, we have been able to reduce the package with a nice 65% in size when zipped.

And for the matter, that is nothing to be to proud off. As you can see in the graphic above, the size of the ModernBB package has been growing with every major release, except for 2.2, which was smaller due to it’s redesigned styles. And with ModernBB 3.3, we perhaps got a little bit to wild. But as you can see, ModernBB 3.4 RC will use a lot less space, in fact, it’s almost an MB smaller. For the final release, we want to go under 500 kB. Sizes are displayed when zipped.

Anyway, we haven’t made just some optimalisations to the code to reduce size. We’ve also changed some stuff in the Mainstage. For example, your profile avatar will now be displayed in the navigation bar. You will also see a completely new, and less weighting editor. It’s not a WYSIWYG editor anymore, through at least, it does work properly. It is also possible to disable the “Moderated by” list on the index of your board, in case you don’t like it there.

For the Backstage, we’ve redesigned the Backstage Accent feature and added 8 new colors (and updated 2 of the existing 4 colors). You can now also change size of an embedded video. Further more, ModernBB 3.4 also comes with an important security improvement. We have changed the way ModernBB creates and saves passwords, improving security drasticaly. Further on, we have the usual bugfixes and other small improvements.

Remember that not all default styles from ModernBB 3.3 are present in 3.4. We recommend you to download the Random 3.1 package from our official download page as soon as ModernBB 3.4.0 is released and upload this package in case you want to keep giving your users the option to select these styles. Otherwise, we recommend removing them from the style folder, as using them will break the design of your forum.