JaxBoards continues to grow more awesome. JaxBoards 2.1.5 offers a lot of architectural improvements and a nicer mobile experience, as well as some fun things!

JaxBoards Architecture:

• Sean rebuilt a lot of code so that it takes better advantage of PHP 8's features - now it's a web app built for PHP 8 instead of a PHP 4 web app that we retrofitted to run in PHP 8.
  

New features:

• Added some classic games and Easter eggs (and added a new one)
  
• Replaced the clock icon with an emoji that shows a different image depending on when the user timed out
  

Bug fixes:

• Solved all the remaining PHP warnings/errors
  
• Googlebot is able to crawl the forums without crashing
  
• Fixed an issue where the forum topic order sometimes got out of whack
  
• Fixed JavaScript tooltip browser warning (no actual effect)
  

Stuff only admins will notice:

• Now you get an "are you sure" prompt when deleting shoutbox posts - previously it was easy to delete those by mistake
  
• Added a PHP error log monitor
  
• Made a spacing fix in modcontrols.php
  

Themes

• Made several skins responsive - a much-desired feature
  
• Created a CSS-based banner for Lithosphere, which should improve load times - thanks Spritey for offering some help with the CSS
  
• Made the body slightly wider for the Bibby Team skin
  
• The New Winter Blue skin's footer is visible now
  
• Removed an extra copy of the Themes folder I accidentally uploaded while setting up the boards in January
  

Data

• Fixed obsolete bibbyteam dot jaxboards dot com links on the forum so they use the current domain instead
  
• Fixed obsolete bibbyteam dot jaxboards dot com links on my old profiles
  
• Changed # to ? in some older links so they'll work properly
  
• Made sure all shoutbox posts are in the database
  

Server infrastructure/change management

• Sean set up Git on the server, making it a lot easy to deploy changes
  

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Edited by: Sean, May 3rd, 2025 @ 9:51 am

Thanks so much Bibby!

To add a bit more technical color (Technicolor?) on this:

Architectural Changes

• The backend has transitioned from procedural "define everything as a global" style (which was just how things were done in PHP 4!) to a fully OOP model with no globals, only dependency injection. The difference here is fundamental. It changes how we can evolve the software by creating distinct parts of the system that can manage themselves instead of dumping everything into one big pile. Think of it as the difference between a pile of clothes on your floor to having them properly put away in their distinct clothes drawers. Much easier to build on and with.
  
• The system is now strongly/strictly typed, which makes working on the software much easier and less error-prone. Certain classes of bugs are now impossible.
  
• Classes have been reorganized into namespaces, which were introduced around PHP 6. These are the "clothes drawers" I mentioned earlier. Much easier to find your pants when they're in the right place!
  

Stuff only admins will notice:

• Downloading a forum backup now produces a .zip file, which of course is about 80-90% smaller than the raw backup it used to create.
  

Themes

• Alfred theme's background clouds now float by.
  
• Rainforest's background now stretches and fills the whole screen instead of tiling. This just wasn't possible 10 years ago, but CSS advancements are wonderful.
  

I'm not sure if more bugs have been created or destroyed since the last update, since I've been rewriting just about everything. Please continue to let me know if you see anything off.
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Edited by: Sean, May 3rd, 2025 @ 10:33 am

and I helped

@Sean Oh yeah, so much happened this month that I forgot to mention the improved backup system! And thanks for making Alfred and Rainforest more fun, too.

I used to consider PHP to be a rather annoying programming language, but I've started to get a better understanding of it - and as you've mentioned, PHP 8 is quite a nice improvement over its ancestors.

@Mario Indeed you did! Thanks for introducing me to Sonar - I have a feeling that a knowledge of this will serve me well in the future.