Hello All!

As I have made a previous post here explaining I would like to continue development on XMB. After some serious life changes I was unfortunately unable to even work on my own projects. As you can see, I have not forgotten about this community.

I have to say...I'm blown away that there are still some people stalking around here. Which, makes me feel pretty inspired.

If anyone on here would me out. I may not have a lot of time for development, however, I can pitch in time for webmaster services, design, and organization services. I can purchase domains, hosting, etc.

All I would ask in return is some help from dedicated people...

Although, there would need to be some changes. The forum would need to be 're-branded'. The reason being, this domain is toxic. Just by reading some former posts, there is too much confusion with domains and such.

I'm willing to give this a shot if other people are will to pitch in. I can begin setting up a Trello Board to organize the development and GitHub to code share.

Why do I want to do this? Honestly, I love forums and the people around them. Forums are dying because of large sites like Reddit and Facebook. But that doesn't mean there isn't room for a small market which XMB could fill.

If know-one here would like to see this through, I understand.

What do you say?...

Quote: Originally posted by LordOfSpoon

Hello All! As I have made a previous post here explaining I would like to continue development on XMB. After some serious life changes I was unfortunately unable to even work on my own projects. As you can see, I have not forgotten about this community. I have to say...I'm blown away that there are still some people stalking around here. Which, makes me feel pretty inspired. If anyone on here would me out. I may not have a lot of time for development, however, I can pitch in time for webmaster services, design, and organization services. I can purchase domains, hosting, etc. All I would ask in return is some help from dedicated people... Although, there would need to be some changes. The forum would need to be 're-branded'. The reason being, this domain is toxic. Just by reading some former posts, there is too much confusion with domains and such. I'm willing to give this a shot if other people are will to pitch in. I can begin setting up a Trello Board to organize the development and GitHub to code share. Why do I want to do this? Honestly, I love forums and the people around them. Forums are dying because of large sites like Reddit and Facebook. But that doesn't mean there isn't room for a small market which XMB could fill. If know-one here would like to see this through, I understand. What do you say?...

Toxic? nope, that's called history. I'm not keen on rebranding as it's an insult to everyone that has helped xmb in the past and currently.

To be honest - anyone can provide webmaster services, design, and organization services along with purchasing of domains, hosting, etc. What xmb does need in my opinion, is people with php experience and time, so there is more than one dev/support.

Good luck though with whatever you decide to do, whether that is here, other forums, creating your own or walking away.

Quote: Originally posted by xmb-fan

Toxic? nope, that's called history. I'm not keen on rebranding as it's an insult to everyone that has helped xmb in the past and currently. To be honest - anyone can provide webmaster services, design, and organization services along with purchasing of domains, hosting, etc. What xmb does need in my opinion, is people with php experience and time, so there is more than one dev/support. Good luck though with whatever you decide to do, whether that is here, other forums, creating your own or walking away.

History is just that... History. We as webmasters remember those great days of a certain website which we had a deep attachment too. Regardless of those emotions, some things just need to be let go for progress to continue.

I can understand how rebranding would feel like an insult. However, from legal complications, DMCA issues, no staff, and many more issues, the truth is that this site remains on the hope that this software will remain relevant and will be remade someday. Which is awesome, don't get me wrong. I applaud the people who have come this far with it. If everyone really cares about this community and this software, it's time to hit the ground running and organize some support.

And you're right... Anyone can provide these services. The fact is, I don't see a lot of people around saying they are (apart from lottos, and other people keeping this site going) offering such services.

Yes, developers are an integral part of the operation. I have many years in the forum 'world' and strong organizational skills. I also have ties to a lot locals colleges and schools in my area. There is much that can be done, even without those handy coding skills.

I very much appreciate your post, xmb-fan. I can see a good future in this software if everyone is willing to pitch in, make hard decisions, and move forward. If thats the case, I will stay around as long as possible. I have no interest in working with another forum software again, unless it's XMB.

The fact that you have registered an account to simply reply to this post, speaks volumes about this software...

Not much for me to say .... miqrogroove is the man for these questions.

Quote: Originally posted by kuba1

Not much for me to say .... miqrogroove is the man for these questions.

Nice to see my u2u worked lol

Branding has never been the issue. My personal goal was to stabilize the old code just so that it was still workable. During that effort, there was a consensus reached that the old code would be of no value to a new major version. It would have to be a total re-write. So the brand was something that could stay or go without much consequence to a new project. And it was never my intention to re-invent this wheel.

Quote: Originally posted by miqrogroove

Branding has never been the issue. My personal goal was to stabilize the old code just so that it was still workable. During that effort, there was a consensus reached that the old code would be of no value to a new major version. It would have to be a total re-write. So the brand was something that could stay or go without much consequence to a new project. And it was never my intention to re-invent this wheel.

Well suppose we build a team for a new project? I miss working in these areas and want to get back in the game. Even the lead of Flarum left to build his own premium forum software.

I have many great ideas and the motivation. Just need the right people.

Been down this path a few times with people coming in and making a level of excitement, eg sliq and eman86, then to never see them again, so I'm not holding my breath. I think over the years, there has been a consolidation of forum providers, with some dropping off the radar and a few new ones emerging as the new front runners.

Quote: Originally posted by lottos

Been down this path a few times with people coming in and making a level of excitement, eg sliq and eman86, then to never see them again, so I'm not holding my breath. I think over the years, there has been a consolidation of forum providers, with some dropping off the radar and a few new ones emerging as the new front runners.

Well, I’m here everyday now. Scanning this topic for replies lol I’m willing to give something an actual shot if others are.

It really depends on how you intend to do it. Writing everything from a scratch is a quite ambitious and very unlikely....
The xmb as it is right now is very messy to extend. You would need to write a framework or use an existing one that would have great extendibility.
I think porting xmb as a full forum module on some existing cms is your best best.

Running 2 forums on the XMB software. Won't plug the links out of respect for the site owner, however they're available upon request (for viewing what we've done with it).

Its extremely customized, and we added features like file upload, store (to buy forum features/profile customization/increased storage space/custom status lines/etc), added all sorts of staff functions, gave super moderators the ability to post ban (spammer problems), "portalized" our forum index, tagging feature + search by tag, stars on posts, points, rep, and all kinds of "jazz."

Would love some of you to look at my code, as an extra pair of eyes is always good. Plus who knows maybe it'd be useful for XMB hacks.

Also, turned several things into the windows equivalent of crontabs. Who's online, today's posts, and a number of other obscure features. Part of that was because of the web application firewall, which NAT'd every user to the firewall's optional interface address necessitating a bypass to properly display guests (namely, parsing the firewall logs and piping it into a csv every 5 minutes).

If any verified users want to hop on SSH and have a look I'd gladly accommodate.

Quote: Originally posted by lottos

Been down this path a few times with people coming in and making a level of excitement, eg sliq and eman86, then to never see them again, so I'm not holding my breath. I think over the years, there has been a consolidation of forum providers, with some dropping off the radar and a few new ones emerging as the new front runners.

100% agree. I've just spent a few days making GaiaBB (nee UltimaBB, which John and I worked on after XMB), PHP 7.4, mysqli, and MariaDB compatible. I think at this point, it might be worthwhile to bring those things together so there can be one code base for those who have historic XMB, XMB 2, UltimaBB, and GaiaBB forums.

Quote: Originally posted by vanderaj

Quote: Originally posted by lottos   Been down this path a few times with people coming in and making a level of excitement, eg sliq and eman86, then to never see them again, so I'm not holding my breath. I think over the years, there has been a consolidation of forum providers, with some dropping off the radar and a few new ones emerging as the new front runners. 100% agree. I've just spent a few days making GaiaBB (nee UltimaBB, which John and I worked on after XMB), PHP 7.4, mysqli, and MariaDB compatible. I think at this point, it might be worthwhile to bring those things together so there can be one code base for those who have historic XMB, XMB 2, UltimaBB, and GaiaBB forums.

I've done some preliminary testing of xmb with php7.4, warning messages [added to bug tracker]:

PHP Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated in /include/global.inc.php on line 34
PHP Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /include/validate.inc.php on line 82

It's not just get magic quotes - something I got rid of in UltimaBB and still come across odd issues here and there in GaiaBB, it's the way that MariaDB (the most common version of MySQL found in today's distros) is a bit more strict about the schema. Without end to end testing, you're going to miss something, and things silently stop working. In GaiaBB's case, it's PMs between members - it just silently fails. There's some many gotchyas like this.

That's why I think it might be time to bring the two softwares back together, picking and choosing the features that should survive and those that shouldn't change. There's a bit of divergence in the code, but the reality is that I re-borrowed the postify() and bbcode support from XMB yesterday to fix problems with PHP 7.4's deprecation of ereg and various modes of preg_replace / match, and for the most part it was a cut and paste job. I'll have to do more testing, but I think the code is close enough to consider a merge.

Noticed your forum footer links to a gaiabb domain that must have expired as it's definitely not to your code. I'd link it to your github [or back here ].

Grabbed your image dimension code in functions.inc.php for another xmb forum user.

Look forward to your further testing results.

I just checked in a bunch of code that includes the XMB postify() and a bunch of other fixes. I'm still working on issues relating to PHP 7.4. I keep on getting surprised at what actually works (terrible code), and what doesn't (clean but ... wrong ... code).

I ported the Davis theme to GaiaBB. It showed that there are issues with importing XMB themes, and also found a bug in header links area that's probably been there for over a decade. I'll get the rest working first before revisiting XMB theme support.

Edit: Yeah, I let that domain expire, so I had thought I had updated all the links in the code to GitHub. There should be no more links to the domain at all.

Quote: Originally posted by vanderaj

I just checked in a bunch of code that includes the XMB postify() and a bunch of other fixes. I'm still working on issues relating to PHP 7.4. I keep on getting surprised at what actually works (terrible code), and what doesn't (clean but ... wrong ... code). I ported the Davis theme to GaiaBB. It showed that there are issues with importing XMB themes, and also found a bug in header links area that's probably been there for over a decade. I'll get the rest working first before revisiting XMB theme support. Edit: Yeah, I let that domain expire, so I had thought I had updated all the links in the code to GitHub. There should be no more links to the domain at all.

Great! Interested on collaborating with this?

There's an interesting bug report now encouraging an overhaul of the XMB session handler. Basically, why does XMB allow weak password resets and why is there no rate checking of failed login attempts, etc. Obviously, XMB has always been weak in these areas.

The minimal amount of work to fix this would be a re-write of the session system (no reason to keep the old code), upgrade of the database schema requiring use of the (new) XMB upgrade script, and increasing the minimum PHP support level to 7-ish.

So I'm looking for second opinions.

Does the community need this, and when?

Will it break anything?

Is it worth the effort anymore?

Quote: Originally posted by miqrogroove

There's an interesting bug report now encouraging an overhaul of the XMB session handler. Basically, why does XMB allow weak password resets and why is there no rate checking of failed login attempts, etc. Obviously, XMB has always been weak in these areas. The minimal amount of work to fix this would be a re-write of the session system (no reason to keep the old code), upgrade of the database schema requiring use of the (new) XMB upgrade script, and increasing the minimum PHP support level to 7-ish. So I'm looking for second opinions. Does the community need this, and when? Will it break anything? Is it worth the effort anymore?

I think you know my opinion: yes to questions 1 and 3!

XMB misc.php allows one password reset request per 24 hours, date and time of last request in members table, column pwdate.

Quote: Originally posted by lottos

XMB misc.php allows one password reset request per 24 hours, date and time of last request in members table, column pwdate.

This part is fine. The report shows we have less than 3 bytes of useful entropy and even less with stronger hacks. Without any rate limits or extra tokens it is possible to brute force account access.