XMB Revival?

angsaysroar - 4-1-2026 at 12:11 AM

I know with the advent of social media, forums have fallen to the wayside; however, I am very interested in reviving XMB, as many are tired of social media and the trash and want something to get away from that.

XMB has always been where my love lies; however, I stopped following the progress and updates, largely because of the lack of mods that are available with the newer versions.

What I'd like to know is if there was support (donations) to help update many of the mods that we loved with 1.9.1 (my favorite version of XMB, largely because of all the mods), would there be any interest in updating those mods to work with the current stable relase of XMB?

flushedpancake - 4-7-2026 at 06:07 PM

I'll try to reply to all of your points.

Agree, social media is a sick burden these days. Not to mention Discord taking the rest of the activity that Facebook and co. would never ever have swayed into the consume-and-reject ultraprogressivist culture of post-2015, in what can only be described as an insane stroke of success for the corporatist capture. It's even to the point where imageboards are 'acceptable' to the Gen Z mind but forums are seen as too slow. But I'm not here to talk about politics or generations.

The lack of mods is a serious issue. Unfortunately, the lack of a plugin hook system - something I've been pushing for - is an inherent problem, and less importantly the lack of documentation for those who might want to make mods. (Almost all of my commits were frontend related, if I recall.)

A lot of the existing mods likely will need a lot of cleanup just to run on versions above 1.9.11.13, if I'm honest - or any PHP version above 5.6.24 for that matter. The amount of time and effort required is far more work than just tearing it down and rewriting the lot, especially since some of these things have been integrated already into the base software, and God knows what the code quality is like.

Donations are probably less important than volunteering at this stage - if you know something that can allow that, perhaps take it up in U2U with miqrogroove? I'm really not the authority on this matter at all so I can't answer, but I get the feeling that while ideas that could either boost morale/manpower/etc. - the best things you can actually do right now are "administering a website that runs the latest XMB version", or "contribute to the project yourself in some form, even if you somehow feel it's stupid to do so". I started reporting things on the bug tracker, and we got a new major point version in about a year, for the first time since 2004. And I still remember the efforts in September 2017 of Xian and co. which got miqrogroove to come back after a long hiatus. Someone's gotta take initiative!

angsaysroar - 4-12-2026 at 06:15 AM

Quote: Originally posted by flushedpancake

the best things you can actually do right now are "administering a website that runs the latest XMB version", or "contribute to the project yourself in some form, even if you somehow feel it's stupid to do so". I started reporting things on the bug tracker, and we got a new major point version in about a year, for the first time since 2004. And I still remember the efforts in September 2017 of Xian and co. which got miqrogroove to come back after a long hiatus. Someone's gotta take initiative!

I was heavily involved with XMB during 1.9.x etc., including being a mod installer on XMBGarage, so I have experience with what XMB was and what you could make it.

Unfortunately, because of that experience, I'm not interested in running a bare-bones version of XMB (especially when there is no active development happening, beyond version updates) because I, and those I've spoken to who want the forum experience to return, know what XMB can be/become with hacks/modifications.

When you're competing with software that has built-in features like shop and quoted replies, most people won't even consider giving it a try (not that I can blame them).

Hence, contribution of donations to update hacks/mods to the most stable release, including finding a way to make XMB and those updated mods future-proof (won't immediately break with new PHP versions, etc)

Thank you for replying, but if this is where and/or why development has halted, I'm likely better switching over to something like phpBB, XenForo, or Invision, etc.

flushedpancake - 4-21-2026 at 11:16 AM

Quote: Originally posted by angsaysroar

Quote: Originally posted by flushedpancake

It's an unfortunate state of affairs, but it's pretty much what it is. Again, I'd rather somebody slightly more informed/authorative take up matters than myself, given I've only been here a few years at most, while there's others out there who've been around much longer and have more experience with coding and the likes.

If you're willing to pop your nose in when you can I'm sure something along the lines of a donations page can be worked out with miqrogroove and/or lottos, but like you say, there's a hell of a lot of catching up needed due to multiple years of stagnation... it's a miracle that there's even been any release at all since 1.9.11.13, let alone a 1.10 that was far too long overdue (by about 15 years).

A reasonable comparison of XMB would be to the UK since the early-mid 2000s. It's 'serviceable' in the sense that it's perfectly usable, but offers nothing you can't get anywhere else better, and isn't really improving nor has much power left to maintain what's there. The lights are still on, though, so it's not all doom and gloom as much as some want to believe it is, even if it looks bleaker than a Belfast skyline.

miqrogroove - 4-22-2026 at 10:58 PM

All mostly accurate. I've been crazy busy with other things in life for the past 12 months. I will say, though, since the release of v1.10 the bug fixes have been a breeze. Some day I/we need to chip away, clean up, and modernize more of the vestigial mistakes of the original XMB.

flushedpancake - 4-23-2026 at 09:20 AM

Quote: Originally posted by miqrogroove

I will say, though, since the release of v1.10 the bug fixes have been a breeze.

1.10 was mostly a 'reimplement stuff in a way to future proof it' release anyway, so that future stuff could be done much easier. In that sense it's effectively been a success.

Quote: Originally posted by miqrogroove

vestigial mistakes of the original XMB.

It doesn't hold up too badly considering its age. Seen far worse.

However, there's definitely elements that need overhauling, mostly frontend related but also stuff related to user permissions/groups in particular which could be far more flexible

Jason Fairmount - 5-4-2026 at 01:41 AM

There's still promise if you have time to experiment. Future-proofing was a godsend, otherwise we would have lost our museum back in 2024.

I've been on and off trying to revamp my 20 year old board, life just gets in the way. (I'll make a new thread once I finish this.) You can also do a lot with some old mods like country flags/state flags.
Featured: my User Control Panel with just editing the new templates system and theme.css overrides

flushedpancake - 5-4-2026 at 07:31 PM

Quote: Originally posted by Jason Fairmount

There's still promise if you have time to experiment. Future-proofing was a godsend, otherwise we would have lost our museum back in 2024.

I've been on and off trying to revamp my 20 year old board, life just gets in the way. (I'll make a new thread once I finish this.) You can also do a lot with some old mods like country flags/state flags.
Featured: my User Control Panel with just editing the new templates system and theme.css overrides

That redesign is pretty much exactly the sort of thing I'd want to see in a template overhaul.

It retains the spirit of XMB and yet modernises it in a way that looks very palatable overall... seriously, consider pushing this to the actual repo at some point once you're done. I'd be willing to advocate for you - this looks amazing.

Good work!