For the old timers around here, you probably remember TikiTiki/Ryan and how early on we broke nearly everything in MyBB (the board software we use right now). We were simply orders of magnitude bigger than any of the boards they had at the time. So their lead developer (TikiTiki/Ryan) was here a lot working with me to make MyBB hum for such a big board.

Well, several years ago TikiTiki/Ryan moved on from MyBB, and it's been a state of slow decay for me since. MyBB now iterates way faster than I would like. I don't fancy having to redo every team skin site wide annually or biannually. Yea. In addition, PHP, the programming language the board is written in, has itself taken on a more fast paced development. As a result you can go from a state of the art brand new MyBB install ... to totally unsupported version of MyBB which requires totally unsupported (and not easily available even) version of PHP in just 2 to 3 years. Now pile on top of that TapaTalk as a moving target as well. And juggling all this mess while making sure it performs well on our unusually large board (which usually requires custom patches from me) becomes quite a chore.

As a result, I think it's time I bit the bullet and wrote my own board software for the site to run on. That way it can be built from the jump with our unusual feature set in mind and once completed be very low maintenance.

For the computer illiterate among us, have no fear. I intend to keep the LOOK and FEEL of the new board as close to the existing MyBB experience as possible. I'll even be carrying over all the MyBB graphics and icons (thanks GPL license!). Ideally, you should barely be able to tell a change has occurred aside from new features. The biggest negative impact to existing use of the site is that the mobile app will be killed off entirely. Instead, the idea is to have the site automatically detect you're mobile and serve you a mobile friendly layout. And for the mobile layout to offer you notifications on your mobile device through the browser. It means one less app for you to install and worry about, but you still get the notifications you want anyway. And then I don't have to go through tons of hoops to run OS X in a VM just to release an iOS app, or deal with the enormous segmentation of Android (we still have people using the app on Android effing 2.3 .... the current Android version is 7.0).

So yea. That's what has been up my sleeve with the ??? appearing around here. The goal is to launch this puppy August 1, 2017. Just in time to work any bugs out before football.

Have a feature you've always wanted here that you want in the new board? Well, here's the feature discussion thread: http://csnbbs.com/thread-794495.html

Want to help test the new board as it gets developed? Send me a PM. Bonus points if you're a Mac user who can test with Safari or a Windows 10 user willing to test with both of the stupid versions of IE they have on Windows these days. But if neither of those applies to you, don't let that stop you.

If you have questions that AREN'T about new features .... post 'em here.