Yes, we’re still working on it. As I’ve already told numerous people, we’re taking the time on putting together a quality and stable release, a lot better than all past releases on MyBB. There are going to be improvements everywhere. Major commits have slowed down recently and there is concentration being put in to existing features as well as attention to detail on others.
New Captcha Images
Captcha images are the random images generated on registration used to disallow automated registrations. The current ones in MyBB suck because they were fairly easy for bots to bypass. I’ve just put in place a new system which is fairly extensive and random which should improve a lot on the existing captcha images.
- The system supports using random TTF (True-type fonts) for characters if your server supports Freetype. A directory exists in which you can upload your own custom TTF fonts which will be randomly selected per character. TTF based characters also randomise in terms of size, angle, colour and shadow position. Servers which do not support TTF fonts will use plain GD fonts in multiple characters and offset positions, but “blown up” bigger to take up more space on the canvas.
- Along with the previous random ‘dots’ on the canvas of the image, there will be random circles, lines, and squares which are also random colours.
- Strings are now only 5 characters - which still leaves for a huge number of possible combinations but allows the characters to be spread out and easier to read by people.
For example, four generated images.
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The first image shows standard generation using the built in (ugly) GD fonts, the second shows generation with Trebuchet MS as the font, and the other two show the use of random fonts per character.
Translatable Settings
“But I could already do that by renaming them…” you say. Bad idea! We override them during upgrades, you’ll make them only available in one language. With 1.2 you’ll now be able to do this with the aid of language files:
/**
* Translation instructions for settings and setting groups:
*
* Groups:
* * Obtain the group name (not title) from the edit group page.
* * Add language variables in the following format:
* $l['setting_group_{name}'] = "Group Name Here";
* $l['setting_group_{name}_desc'] = "Group Description";
*
* Ex:
* $l['setting_group_general'] = "General Settings";
* $l['setting_group_general_desc'] = "Description of general settings here";
*
* Settings:
* * Obtain the setting name from the edit seting page.
* * Add language variables in the following format:
* $l['setting_{name}'] = "Setting Name Here";
* $l['setting_{name}_desc'] = "Setting Description";
*
* Ex:
* $l['setting_bbname'] = "Board Name";
* $l['setting_bbname_desc'] = "Description for board name here";
*
*/
Nifty.
Subscription Mail Queue
In the code, I’ve also implemented a queue based subscription mailing system. For small boards this won’t make much of a difference but those boards with a larger user base and many people subscribed to threads and forums will notice the difference.
The way it works is when a reply is made to a subscribed thread, all emails for the subscribers are generated and then stored in the database. At the end of each page view, MyBB checks to see how many messages are in the mail queue - if there are some, it will send a maxiumum of 20 of those messages per page view until the queue is empty.
Other New Things
- Theme CSS can be cached to the file system.
- MYBB_ROOT and MYBB_ADMIN_DIR constants define locations within MyBB. All opened files/folders are referenced with these paths.
- RSS & Atom (Yes, Atom support was also added) auto discovery.
- Mr. Clippy (a paperclip) is making his way to threads with attachments. From now on, MyBB tracks the number of attachments per thread and displays a little paperclip on the forum display page with that number.
- Support for MySQLi (MySQL Improved)
- For moderators, the number of unapproved threads/posts in a forum is displayed on the index, the number of posts unapproved in a thread is also shown on the forum display page.
- Search flood checking - A user can only perform 1 search in x seconds.
There is of course, more than that and we’re working to get a release ready.
Comments
Dempsey (May 10th, 2006, 1:18 am)
Sounds great, like the new improvements
Keep up the great work, and don’t forget to kep your eyes open, I’m gonna steal your Mini Mac when you’re not looking :p
kodaks (May 11th, 2006, 8:30 am)
Looks great Chris!!!
Belloman (May 11th, 2006, 9:14 am)
Ah, thanks for informing me on some of the stuff you’ve added
Sounds really good, you’re making MyBB better and better 
Which is always good, of course.
k776 (May 11th, 2006, 4:56 pm)
I thought I’d pop in and say congradulations on such awesome improvments. MyBB has come a long way. Look forward to testing it. Any ETA?
Chris Boulton (May 11th, 2006, 11:20 pm)
:———-o! Kieran! :———-o!
Probably sometime in next month for a private beta and then hopefully a month after that, public release..
k776 (May 12th, 2006, 7:23 am)
Hi Chris. Long time. Sounds like its coming along nicely. Will this version have yet another new theme? Admin CP stuff incorperated yet or not till 1.4? Saw your post about AJAX. Sweet
Btw, what was the answer to that Guess the feature? Comments only showed something about stats, rdf, and page generation times.
(how the bug tracker?
)
And
The wiki looks awesome 
Belloman (May 12th, 2006, 12:33 pm)
I wonder if he’ll tell the public… I doubt it
xiaozhu (May 12th, 2006, 6:31 pm)
That means..this release will only be out in around July
tikitiki (May 13th, 2006, 2:32 am)
Glad to see some of my suggestions made it in
(p.s. Hi Kieran! - long time no see)
Christian585 (May 13th, 2006, 8:28 am)
Lookin’ forward to 1.2! Keep up the good work MyBB Team!
Cheers!
Dennis (May 14th, 2006, 6:39 pm)
k
7
7
6
is back!!! Did you have a nice vacation?
Bobby (May 14th, 2006, 8:25 pm)
Vacation! I need one… oh hello K776, hows it hanging?
BTW, the captcha images dont look really promising. They make it much easier for bots to read seeing as their much easier to read than what is currently in place. The reason we have Captcha images is to stop the amount of automated signups. PhpBB is working on improving their captcha images so humans can JUST read it, you might just want to flick through the pages here: http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?sid=&f=4&t=23549&hilit=captcha
Bobby (May 14th, 2006, 8:31 pm)
Something else YOU SHOULD READ and try to avoid any look-alikes are here: http://sam.zoy.org/pwntcha/
vBulletin hasnt got a chance!
(sorry for the double post)
Chris Boulton (May 14th, 2006, 8:51 pm)
Actually the current ones have 100% of a chance of being decoded easily. The non-ttf font one above is the same as you can’t do much to change the characters around.
The current ones are a lot harder to read by bots too - the text on angles, random shadow width’s and positions, random font sizes etc. They make look easier for you to read, but in terms of OCR they’re about 12 times better than the current ones. Users specifying their own custom fonts (which they can do by placing them in a directory) will make the protection stronger. I also forgot to mention the random “crap” in the background of the images.
When I designed them, I did follow that “PWNtcha” article. I tried to take the best of both worlds . I didn’t implement things that make it fifty times harder to read for people, and tried to include things to trick bots. I also needed a workable solution that was possible fairly easily with GD.
Bobby (May 14th, 2006, 8:59 pm)
Well I guess you solved the problem without getting the user to bang their head against the wall because they cant figure out the solution. Actually, thats what Captcha images are about, let the computer bang its virtual head and allow the human user to pass. My bad.
And I would be changing the backgrounds (is that what you were implying, you didnt quite finish the sentence) to something like what Passport has, even though I dont want users with hemerages.