The Future Looks Bright

So it’s been about 6 months since Novaboard changed ownership and so far things have gone pretty well with 3 versions released already (1.1, 1.1.1 and 1.1.2).

Most of this development time however, has been used to fix bugs and some security issues that existed in the software before the changeover. With great support from you, the community, the board is now very stable and secure; all of the bugs of which we are aware of have been dealt with. Of course this has been very important – there’s no point in a forum having tons of features if its crashing every 5 minutes or allowing hackers to gain access – but this has meant that we have been unable to kick on with our planned new features as fast as we would have liked. The end result of this is that the basic functionality of the software is now up to standard. This means we are now finally able to develop new features to help NovaBoard grow and reach its true potential.

The Next Version

The release of the current version 1.1.2 actually seems to be a very long time ago, dating back to September, but development has still been very much going on behind the scenes. During this time we’ve once again fixed numerous bugs that were reported. However, we’ve also been able to add a few new small features:

• Shadow Topics – When moving a topic, you now have the option to create a ’shadow topic’. This is where a copy of the topic is added to its original forum so users can get redirected to the new topic easily. Now it doesn’t just look like the topic disappeared!
• Redirect Forums – It is now possible to make a forum redirect to a different URL when clicked. Maybe you want to create a redirection to the subscriptions area to really make that link stand out?
• Trashcan Forum – From the admin cp you can now enable a ‘trashcan forum’. This is simply an area where deleted posts are stored just in case you ever want to restore them. It will also empty itself every so often depending on your preference. It’s basically just like the recycle bin on your desktop.

You can keep up-to-date with all the changes to the software over at our Google Code Project page.

What Can I Do?

If you use NovaBoard to power your community it makes sense that you might want to have an input on what goes into the software, or how a certain feature should work. If this sounds like you, take a look at what you can do to get involved:

• If you have a good idea for a feature or just want to discuss a certain aspect of NovaBoard head over here.
• Are you a module developer? If so, then you may find that NovaBoard is currently lacking a hook location to allow your module to work. If this is the case, you can request a new hook to be added by posting here with the relevant info.
• If you find a bug in the software then please report it here

The Future

We have big plans for NovaBoard in the future. Without giving too much away, we’re aiming to make the software much more extensible than it currently is, make themes much less of a hassle to create and allow conversions from other popular software.

Hopefully that’s enough to wet your appetite and thanks for reading.

The future of NovaBoard looks bright and we hope you’ll be with us for the journey!