Forum Upgrade - It's finally happening!
This is just a quick note. Over the next few weeks, the team plans on finally updating the forums to more modern, open source software that will play nice with current browsers and will connect with plugins that will allow for better mobile browsing. Right now, the software of choice appears to be MyBB, though we’ve also experimented with PhpBB. At the moment, the plan is for internal testing to take place on the weekend of March 3rd and full conversion to take place on the weekend of March 10th.
We’ll attempt to keep everyone updated with our progress in this thread (until we no longer can). When the forums go down, keep an eye on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter for further updates.
With luck, the downtime during the switch will be brief, and the forum after the switch will be much more powerful. Thanks to all of you who have been pushing for this update. It’s been a long time coming.
Will you add support for tapatalk ? :)
What forum software will you be changing to?
That’d be epic!
Nice, Eden RC1 coming, and a good forum update.
No no no……. Please don’t change! Just add tapatalk or forum runner!
@Justin
Changing was inevitable. vB is closed and requires a license for the update that would allow tapatalk. Generally speaking, spending a large amount of money on an updated license, when OSS is available that will perform the same task, seems like not a genius move to the non-profit foundation.
YES! Happy that the forum is getting an update. There is alot of features on the current forum that are missing. Especially mobile support. Thank you XBMC Team!
@natethomas
Very true!
Feel free to click the link to see an early view of the new forum. I think you’ll find that, mostly, it just looks like the old forum.
http://i43.tinypic.com/1zqdc3a.jpg
Sigh.. The forum works just fine, as is. Please don’t change it :(
I noticed the existing forum hit 100,000 members this weekend!
That is pretty cool news too, with over 1-milion posts now! :)
OMG Finally! Good job guys! Hope you pick a very neat theme :-)
I once ran multiple MyBB instances, and I would not recommend it, I had security problems every few month, and by that I do not mean updates but serious problems. If I were you I’d take a look at SimpleMachines.
+1 for myBB – Best forum software ever!
This is great news! Finally :)
Can’t understand why anyone would vote against it, a new forum is def. needed and the license-argument is just too great of a deal.
I believe that people argumenting in favor of a stand-still work for vB ;)
The hold up on things like tapatalk was the forum change. In other words, once the forum change over is done, we’ll be able to enable something. No ETA on it, but it was simply not an option until we did these upgrades, so now it’s an option on the table.
I would take vB over PHPbb any day, I’ve used both and vB has a lot more features and is a lot more of a joy to use. The license is worth it.
I like current one. Please do not change
Nice. Hope it’s not going to look as shabby as Rome’s Forum Romanum ;-).
@TheAstronaut
I agree, phpBB is severely outdated.
While I agree with the move to an opensource forum to coincide with opensource software, VB maybe the best forums out there, especially regarding security. I’ve experimented with a number of them, and while there all good in their own way, I tend to always fall back to VB. But I will put a 2nd out there and agree with Marcus about SimpleMachines. IMO, SMF is another great option.
Love the picture! ;) Change is almost always good in my book.
@Paul
VB 3.x was good in is days. However, after the acquisition by another company, VBulletin 4 turns out to be total crap.
Best forum software available today IMO is Invision power board and Xenforo (by the old vbulletin developers).
However none of them are free, and I believe an open source project like XBMC should promote the use of other OSS. MyBB is then the best choice.
Be careful with MyBB, it is not well regarded for security or BIG forums.
PHPBB is nice, but old and not in active development these days. Only security updates have been released for the last 4 years, no real new features.
My choice would be either XenForo or VBullitin. Both are incredibly secure and well suited to large userbase forums.
VBulletin has a fantastic default skin in v4 and is easy to use.
Xenforo is the up and coming one at the moment and is brand new written from scratch by the guys who originally did vbulletin. Its a joy to use but lacks good skins at the moment. If anything this is the one forum admins like myself are moving towards as it really is the most advanced out there with good prospects in the future.
I really would pay some money for forum software, it is one of those things that surprisingly is worth paying for in the long term. I’m afraid to say the open source alternatives just don’t come close.
Running such a big community, I’d say the vB license is worth it. Please don’t ‘upgrade’ to myBB or phpBB. I know it’s free and open source, but that really doesn’t weigh against the disadvantages those two packages actually introduce on their part. Actually, switching to one of those packages would be a huge ‘downgrade’.
I’d say upgrading is required, but please, stay with vB! They have excellent tapatalk support. Also, vB is used by almost all big communities. There’s a reason why they use it. XDA for example is one piece of work, build upon vB.
As a forum admin (75k members, 500k posts, 3 million annual visitors), I second the recommendation of sticking with vB or using ZenForo. The open sources packages have major limitations and security holes that take too long to get patched.
Hi,
What about the DTS HD Support?
I hope the forum doesn’t change too much. From a user standpoint, I have gotten used to and really like the current forum. That being said, I realize there are some logistical needs that need to be met, and you guys gotta do what you gotta do. Hopefully all goes smoothly!
Well done – this is way overdue. A project like XBMC should be using OSS imo. Also, tapatalk support will be most welcome!
Where did you hear that? I use myBB for a couple of admittedly not large forums – however I haven’t had any security problems and they release security updates quite frequently. And what’s the problem with large forums? Here is one with 15 million posts and over 264 000 members and appears to be quite sucessful.
If vBulletin has a feature that the open source alternatives are lacking then that’s a valid concern, however I find too often that people cite security or stability as the backbone of their argument when trying what is simply their personal preference. (See PC vs Mac, Android vs BB, etc.)
The Forum Software you want to get is Simple Machines Forum. (SMF 2) I think it is at simple machines dot com
It is free, and has excellent community support, and tons of Themes and MODs.
Unparalleled Security: I’ve used it 5 Years and I have never been hacked. This is the safest bet too!
Software Santa
MediaPortal switched to XenForo just two week ago, so maybe ask their forum admins what made them choose XenForo over all other alternatives?
vB is in my opinion the best forum software out there. How about creating a fund drive to pay for the upgrade? I can’t stand PhPbb. That package is old school and very clunky. If you look around you will see the best forums run vB.
While the free open source non profit argument is quite good sense, I think you shoud not rule out paid for solutions involving community support.
I’d gladly “fund” part of licence you guys consider necessary.
Looking forward to using tapatalk….
@Varazir
Tapatalk please.
Awesome!
Progress is good…now let’s see if we can start implementing some type of moderating in the forums. It’s really distracting when there are ancient posts that have fulfilled their original need/question and are still open and people keep resurrecting the dead ;-) Then people try to find an answer and have to go through umpteenthousand different posts to find out that what they were looking for is not there…or worse, people keep asking the same old questions that had been answered a thousand other times, just because they don’t want to read the umpteenthousand old posts.
Anyone having problems with apple tv always freezing.Any suggestions on how to fix the problem other than paying for it legitimately.
thx
Be warned – MyBB has a horrendous record for security, including the recent embarassing eval() exploit that was found back in October. The codebase is infested with haphazard use of eval left and right, which can easily leave servers vulnerable. Avoid it like the plague – a knowledgeable and skilled developer won’t need to use eval() in the situations that they use it for.
Furthermore, they even were blindly distributing a tampered version of their own software for some time. If they can’t handle the security of their own servers, why trust them with your own?
Some reading for enlightenment:
http://blog.mybb.com/2011/10/06/1-6-4-security-vulnerabilit/
http://blog.mybb.com/2011/10/25/some-closure-on-the-1-6-4-security-vulnerability/
RE XenForo, there’s a number of issues with Accessibility that can be showstoppers depending on your audience. Screen readers and screen magnification (or even text resizing) has been problematic for many disabled users that I know
phpBB is in itself pretty dated regarding features, but reasonably secure.
vB is a joke. You’d better have a monster of a server ready if you choose it. Same goes for IP.Board – they both use database queries like a cheap restaurant uses salt.
All in all I recommend looking at the Secunia advisory database or something just as reputable before finalizing your decision on what to go with.
…oh, and finally, regarding tapatalk – it should be noted that when it was submitted to the phpBB MODDB for approval it was denied for security “issues” then, and has never been resubmitted by the developers. A worrying sign.
Hi,
Firstly I’d like to cover the security issue that was discovered. Our main website was exploited without our knowledge and the downloads package was tampered with to include malicious code. We have gotten to the root of this issue, and it has been fixed. It has nothing to do with MyBB or any software we develop. MyBB doesn’t have a ‘horrendous’ record for security. We at MyBB take security very seriously. There’s nothing we prioritize more. Security releases have been deployed as little as 2 hours after we have been notified. We’re now hosting our downloads on Github so this issue won’t occur in the future.
The reason why we still use eval for templates is because we haven’t yet reached a major release where it would be logical to re-write the whole template system. We have applied security measures to prevent it being maliciously used, but in any case it requires administrator permissions. We will be using Twig for a template system in MyBB 2.0. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to forward them to nathan [at] mybb [dot] com
Regards,
Nathan Malcolm
SQA Team
MyBB Group
phpBB3 ?
MyBB ?
Ouch !
Like I said the last time ….. don’t choose open source out of ideology.
xbmc.org is a great open source product.
and the current iterations of phpBB3 and MyBB will *NOT* work at xbmc.org
Suggestion: stick with vBulletin 3 or upgrade to Xenforo.
Moving to a product just because it is Open Source is a
phpBB3 ?
MyBB ?
Ouch !
Like I said the last time ….. don’t choose open source out of ideology.
xbmc.org is a great open source product.
and the current iterations of phpBB3 and MyBB will *NOT* work at xbmc.org
Suggestion: stick with vBulletin 3 or upgrade to Xenforo.
Moving to a product just because it is Open Source is a failure waiting to happen.
@Gary
Your knowledge seems outdated., as vB3 is no longer supported. Sure, it still works as forum software, but it will not be showing any new features unless you build them yourself. vB4 is a plain resource-hog, and if you buy the Suite, you’ll be buying a real lemon, with a broken CMS system. vB used to be great, now it’s just outdated and uninspired. The only things that IB have released recently are additional (paid) add-ons like a FaceBook or Mobile app (neither of which have been properly designed), or VigLink integration that nobody asked for.
We upgraded from vB3 to vB4 and instantly saw our serverload increase. After a few weeks of being on vB4 (which took months of preparation, hundreds of USD, and more hours as every update was released), we already were looking into an exit strategy. We ended up on XenForo, and have not looked back since.
The one thing missing in XenForo that the opening post mentions is a mobile solution, but if you do not mind waiting a little longer, that is being worked on by the XenForo team. If you want modern, fast, and intuitive software, take another look at XenForo. Your users, admins and server will love you for it ;)
I think this is worthy of a read…. you have some concerned friends looking out for you.
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/rescue-xbmc-org.28861
They have already stated they’re looking for an open source project. Frankly most of those posts are biased. If that was posted on the IPB community they would get the exact same response for IPB. The same applies to other forum software communities.
maybe after this serious update to go with the awaited Eden release there can be some serious overhaul on the wiki.
In depth step by step explanation of making skins and plugins would be nice, I think it would lead to more developers,
leading to more people willing to take the plunge and give xbmc a go.