As you may notice, on miniBB front page the «Current version» now appears as: 3.5 [Coming Soon].

To avoid confusions, I'd like to note in short, that this version is now under testing, it is installed here, on this forum, but it's not yet released officially — under Downloads, only the prior release is available.

The new version should come up in about couple of months since this tiding. If you'd like to install miniBB immediately, you could download version 3.4.2, and then upgrade; but if there's no rush, I highly recommend to wait for a new release. Of course, this note is for those only who'd like to install miniBB from scratch.

In addition to the basic package, I must work out a lot of stuff in the add-ons, compiler and re-build the miniBB Demo, so besides of the initial release, there would be a lot of extra work.

The major improvement in the miniBB ver.3.5 is a tension to be compatible with PHP 7.x, incl. PHP 7.3. and 7.4, and most hopefully it would be also compatible wit PHP 8.0, as reviewing the changes log for PHP 8.0 didn't give me some obvious major changes or deprecation of older functions, which would make the newer miniBB incompatible with it. Extensions for the full mySQL support (utf8mb4 mode) in the newer mySQL versions would be also available. Despite of it, this release would be still compatible with PHP starting with version 5.2 and older versions of mySQL with the basic utf8 support.

This release will also include a lot of new stuff and bugfixes. One of them is the «Watching» feature, which will replace the Favorites add-on, and would allow to monitor new replies since latest reading in selected topics. Another function is a try-out to prevent brute-forcing on login attempts. Finally, there would be some new options to handle more appealing typography of miniBB posts. For example, regular dash like '-' would be auto-converted to ' — '. The same for quotes — while you could type the regular single quotes like ''...'', they would be converted to curly quotes like « and » or whatever specified (these replacements would be optional).

Version 3.5 and its possible series would be the last in the releases of miniBB, which would contain the authorization based on md5-based-cookies. In miniBB 4.0, I've planned to recode the authorization mechanism to support more secured and hash-based sessions.

As soon as the new version is published, and all extra adjustments done, I'll drop a new note about it; stay tuned.

That's great news!

I am super excited for the new release as well! Can't wait to try it out :) Thank you very much.

It's on the way. The local version of all stuff is ready; I've upgraded the Demo Forums to the core v3.5 and all the add-ons which will be updated among this release. Testing is welcome there.

This forum is also updated to the latest versions of files, despite it still keeps the 'coming soon' note in the version stack.

The package itself should come in a couple of days. Just a few details to polish left. Stay tuned.

Is the 4.0 version something that will build on the 3.5 version, to further make it possible to update and all from the former version?

The last many years since windows 2000, I feel like I have only struggled more and more with technology — the only thing I do on them it seems, is to fix issues all the time to get them working :/

Some times one just feel like getting the hammer out and do away with it all, the madness comes from everywhere.

Sorry went somewhat off topic here. I'm just trying to sort some things out before getting to the installation of the forum and apparently it makes as always issues. Just while writing, more issues poped up, how wonderful... something with passive mode while downloading files from the server. *SIGH* That was new... Like it is driving a broken vehicle where something breaks all the time. Last time I tried to download the project, it just stopped after downloading 10 GB...

If I download it from Linux, it seemingly updates the files every time I upload or download, making the sync useless as it wants to either download it all again or upload :P And then all those spaces you get in your file because Microsucks, Linux and Mac have 3 different ways of using some kind of code for spaces.... Just wonderful. One ftp mode breaks some of the files while another breaks others... Like there is just no way of winning it seems for me.

Just endless issues... the days of computing acting sane is over long ago. Endless updates, Spyware, ads and jailing the user and making it as difficult as possible so they can sell support and make it hard for the little guy to do things for himself without paying large sums of money for help, support or changing for battery in equipment. While people talk about being Green, they design things for obsolution, hardware and software while treating the symptom and faulting the user for it!

It is a madhouse on so many levels.

Dearly regards — Darkijah

Not to forget to get multiple results in Browsers with the same webpage... Because apparently no standard has to be followed.
And of cause you should not be allowed to turn Cache of in a browser anymore, because that makes it so easy to then test a webpage on the fly or something... Because lets just take standard sane feature away from the user and promote all the insanity on them.

So... Yea, that's just my world and how I look on things. Google moves so quickly on Android whatever version so the Programmers can't follow along with there app because they of cause can't make things backward compatible, nope! You will hit into issues on one version working on another and vice versa while stealing standard features away and jailing and eroding the users ability to control his own devices while pushing all the ads and spying and what not...

Just terrible, terrible, absolutely terrible.

Updates in the past actually did fix things, and you did not need to re download the whole app again — wasting bandwidth and proclaiming we need faster internet while it is purposely miss used, apps changing interface all the time needing to relearn again and breaking the app after update that was working without any issues before hand and of cause keeping you away from the ability to downgrade. And on and on it goes.

Jail phone, Jail software, Spy Phone, Spy software, Ad Phone, Ad Software — it all grows as a disgusting fungus/cancer infection killing it the health.

— Darkijah

All miniBB versions are actually the builds over the recent versions. It's just planned that 4.0 would contain some major changes to authorization and possibly the new set of templates. But it won't make the upgrade impossible, as the basic miniBB database (responsible for holding topics/messages) won't be critically changed as it's not changed for years.

Paul
But unable to install in Windows 10. Can you provide any suggestions in this regard?

At first you have to install Apache/PHP/mySQL properly. Did you proceed with their installations?

The configuration for Windows is also know as WAMP (Windows/Apache/mySQL/PHP). Searching over the web, you'll find a lot of websites offering free WAMP packages which could be installed on Windows by a few mouse clicks, so you have a ready development environment with the proper apps miniBB requires.

Then if something goes wrong, report us more precisely, at what step you were unable to proceed with something.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will try and after that reply to you.