This is a post from the Administration forum about a new version of E-Blah.

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I don't really want to give the script up - and I do plan on (or want to plan on) one day releasing another update to fix some of the bugs in it.  However, I'm just not very interested in Perl anymore to be completely honest.  Moreover, I work 45 hours a week programming PHP... when I get home, usually the last thing I want to do is program more on something I'm not as interested in anymore.  When E-Blah first started, I was really into forums but that's greatly lessened in the past years.  Any new major future projects I do, I may release under the E-Blah name -- an idea I've thought about for a while -- but I don't have any ideas for new projects as of now.

I am open to the possibility of users submitting changes to me to review and merge into E-Blah if anyone wants to do that.

For those that don't know, I've been working with PHP, JavaScript and MySQL full time now since June 2008 -- and I enjoy just about everything with the languages and SQL.  I've also recently moved.  As I said on the Administrator forum: I do want to release more versions of the software; but I can't say when that will happen or if it will.

If anyone has any ideas for future projects with PHP, please let me know as I'm open to ideas... I'd really prefer more of a service-oriented project.

If anyone has any questions, please let me know here or via e-mail.

OK, I'll be the fool that stumbles in where angels fear to tread.  This has probably already been well-hashed over in the admin forum--but for the rest of us, your message is not really reassuring.

Justin, all of us can understand moving on, and losing interest in something that once absorbed you--and noone would begrudge you the opportunities to grow and change that lie before you.  Change, especially in the electronic field, is so rapid and fluid--so much lies before you.  (OK, yeah--I got 3 decades more living than you, but I do actually remember 23.)

I'm by no means a maven, but I have to say that E-Blah seems to me to be remarkably simple and stable, which is good.  But, in the electronic world, nothing is forever.  Nothing is even durable beyond next year.  And those of us who have committed to using E-Blah are, as a result, more than a little nervous when we learn that it just isn't going to move forward, and the person who controls it has largely lost interest.  

I can fully appreciate the affection the creator feels for the creation, and the desire to keep it safe.  But I think this may be one of those parent/child things--you need to let go of the E-Blah forum software, to allow those who use it to do what may be necessary to continue to maintain it.  You don't have to let go of the name, and the possibility of using that name for other products.  But if your focus is elsewhere, you shouldn't have to be worrying about how those of us who rely on your prior creation are making out--and, on the flip side, we shouldn't be stranded high and dry because you have other fish to fry.

Please give serious consideration to cutting the forum software loose and turning it over to someone else.  All those irritating issues--about who profits, and it should be free forever, and like that--can actually be dealt with pretty easily, if folks are talking (more or less) face to face in good faith and with a desire to make things work.

Sigh.  Sorry, guys, if this makes things worse.

I am interested in the idea of the community improving the script and sending submissions to Justin. It would be a great addition to what already exists. I understand that sometimes people feel that they need to move on from an old project into something new. I support that fully, but I do not want E-Blah to cease being improved because it's such a great piece of software. I've been using E-Blah exclusively for the past 3 years and have grown to love its ease of use and reliability. I've become very familiar with its ins and outs. Also, lately, I've been working on adding MS SQL support the SQL version of E-Blah. Progress has been slow due to school and work demands, but I am working on the project when I have time.

Quoted from pcmantinker

I am interested in the idea of the community improving the script and sending submissions to Justin. It would be a great addition to what already exists. I understand that sometimes people feel that they need to move on from an old project into something new. I support that fully, but I do not want E-Blah to cease being improved because it's such a great piece of software. I've been using E-Blah exclusively for the past 3 years and have grown to love its ease of use and reliability. I've become very familiar with its ins and outs. Also, lately, I've been working on adding MS SQL support the SQL version of E-Blah. Progress has been slow due to school and work demands, but I am working on the project when I have time.

This is really what I would also like to see.  I don't really want to just turn it over to someone -- but if users wanted to submit code, I'd be all for that -- it would greatly help bug control/stablity.

I'm very much a newbie here, and a novice when it comes to CHMODs and PHP -- isn't that a type of brown sauce -- but I am an experienced therapist and coach and I admire very much the way that Justin has been honest and straightforward with Eblah users, and has spent time and effort in thinking out his own priorities and his OWN future, never mind the script.

It is a truism that, even if we are brilliant at what we have done- perhaps even more so, what interests us at 20 isn't going to be the focus of our lives at 30, but not everyone has the strength of purpose to risk making a change which will bring hassle and disapproval from those around us who we have grown to like and respect.

Like others who have posted on this forum, I have some difficulty in coming to terms with what is happening. But it is happening, so lets start from where we are, not where we would like to be.

Eblah developed by the community might be even greater than the existing product. (Provided I don't try and write any code).

What bugs, by the way ???

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What bugs, by the way ???

Nothing that would effect functionality. Most bugs (Not that there are many) are bugs that most people would never notice. Bugs are often reported by very scrupulous people who've used the script for years and notice something isn't the way they'd expect it to be.

I can't think of any off the top of my head but there should be some posted in the relevant board here.

I wonder how this will affect prepaid upgrades for life.  

All the best,

Jimbo  

Justin is very honest, I'm sure he'll either honour them or refund some money... Who knows...

Is there any chance at some point we see an E-Blah that uses PHP as the base? Could it even be done in PHP Without the use of a database? I'm not too fond of MySQL particularly since it's the first thing targeted in a hack, not to mention the recent Oracle aquisition.

Also, is there a possibility of eblah being open sourced under an open license with you as the lead of the repository. My only fear is that I don't want to see E-Blah go the way of ikonboard, with it's constant revisioning and endless in fighting between multiple dev teams and owners.

There's no way to convert elaborate Perl scripts to PHP scripts. So it would mean a complete rewrite from the ground up, to make it in PHP. Then how is it E-Blah? It'd be a completely different board system.
So no, there's no way E-Blah would ever be PHP.

Not liking MySQL for that reason is bad programming logic, it's best to just secure the interaction with the database and there's no problem. Flat file databases like the one E-Blah uses has it's own limitations. It's ideal though, for people without access to MySQL.

And yes, PHP can operate a flat file database system similarly to Perl. Maybe not as efficiently, but that's one of Perl's strong points.

I am having a helluva time around here. Found a lot of cool stuff at E-Blah. I just wonder what the future is gonna be ? Let me see how it goes ??? Keep doing the good work and pray 4 everybody out there.  

Well, I'm already starting some of the markup changes for my fork. This first screenshot may show much change (well however, I'm still trying to work out how to make it exactly sized like the old one), but the underlying markup has changed a bit, the main navigation is now implemented as a unordered list.



This, when finished, should improve theming capabilities.