I invite you to fork b2evolution and make it work on PHP 8.

https://fplanque.com/dev/b2evolution/18-years-of-b2evolution

I wonder if anyone is about to pick up this glove?

If indeed b2evo does not work on PHP 8.0, then we are all sitting on a time-bomb... Soon enough PHP 7.4 will be end-of-life, and these days usually come sooner than one thinks.

Has anyone on this forum paid any thought to continuation or alternatives?

@hbarel wrote earlier:

. . . Soon enough PHP 7.4 will be end-of-life, and these days usually come sooner than one thinks.

If, as the concern seems to be the continuation of b2evo past 7.*, I doubt php 7.4 will be an issue for a while:)

There may be some security issues but hopefully there will be some update.

https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php

Considering the time for which I've been using b2evo, one year and nine months is small change...

Also, even before PHP 7.4 is officially EOL, other packages on the server may require it to be upgraded sooner, and maintaining two PHP versions on the same machine is seldom a recipe for good health... :-)

@hbarel wrote earlier:

I wonder if anyone is about to pick up this glove?

I also wonder. Is it realistic that someone will do it? What can we users do to keep the project alive? Or is everybody already looking for alternatives?

@nomad @hbarel

I see this that in this topic @nanahuatl is are using php 8 already and I have just updated to v8 via cpanel with no sign of issues yet, so maybe the concerns are a bit in the wind.

Please post any issues you have, if you do update php to v8, but each in a separate thread :)

@amoun wrote earlier:

@nomad @hbarel

I see this that in this topic @nanahuatl is are using php 8 already and I have just updated to v8 via cpanel with no sign of issues yet, so maybe the concerns are a bit in the wind.

Please post any issues you have, if you do update php to v8, but each in a separate thread :)

Thanks Amoun! This is very good news indeed. :-)

I believe the concern of @nomad, myself, and probably hundreds of others is not entirely in the wind, because it may be more generic... When you maintain a system that is based on abandon-ware, you are essentially sitting on a mini time-bomb... Web applications do not have long shelf life when not maintained...

But that said, as long as you are in the game, I allow myself to remain optimistic!

@nomad wrote earlier:

@hbarel wrote earlier:

I wonder if anyone is about to pick up this glove?

I also wonder. Is it realistic that someone will do it? What can we users do to keep the project alive? Or is everybody already looking for alternatives?

Hey @nomad,

Having alternatives in mind is always a good strategy, even if those are not immediately pursued. Keep in mind, however, that for what I know, such alternatives are few and far between. WordPress is out of the question for its complexity and questionable security model, Joomla I also found to be too cumbersome for most purposes. Seriously, b2evolution is very unique in its proper blend of functionality with (relative) simplicity.

I actually think @fplanque took much less "wrong turns" than he thinks he took when designing b2evolution.

@hbarel wrote earlier:

Keep in mind, however, that for what I know, such alternatives are few and far between.

Yes, I totally agree. Although I wish that the admin section was less complex and confusing, I am not aware of an alternative. I was searching for a less complex alternative for use in education settings, but had to conclude that the choices are fewer today than 10-15 years ago. I am not fond of Wordpress either - mostly because it is getting too commercial (esp. plugins) and less trustworthy. I do like Dokuwiki, though, still alive and kicking, maybe as old as b2evolution, but too much hassle to customize to get even less than one third of b2evolution's functionality.

@nomad wrote earlier:

@hbarel wrote earlier:

Keep in mind, however, that for what I know, such alternatives are few and far between.

Yes, I totally agree. Although I wish that the admin section was less complex and confusing, I am not aware of an alternative. I was searching for a less complex alternative for use in education settings, but had to conclude that the choices are fewer today than 10-15 years ago. I am not fond of Wordpress either - mostly because it is getting too commercial (esp. plugins) and less trustworthy. I do like Dokuwiki, though, still alive and kicking, maybe as old as b2evolution, but too much hassle to customize to get even less than one third of b2evolution's functionality.

Yes, admin section in b2evo is complex, but truth be told -- given the amount of features and properties, I am not sure I could have done a better job in getting this organized... There are simpler tools, but they don't do half as much, so it's not a fair comparison.

I also looked at a few static-page alternatives, but they (the ones I saw) are less powerful by orders of magnitude. There is a difference between a CMS and a tool to create an online manual... I generally believe that code-based CMS (CMS that generates pages JIT), combined with good caching, is more promising than an entirely static architecture; but I will be happy to be shown otherwise.

Dokuwiki is awesome, I use it too for my internal team to collaborate on small pieces of documentation and research notes. But this is not a blog engine...

@hbarel wrote earlier:

I also looked at a few static-page alternatives, but they (the ones I saw) are less powerful by orders of magnitude. (...)

Dokuwiki is awesome, I use it too for my internal team to collaborate on small pieces of documentation and research notes. But this is not a blog engine...

Yes, I agree with you regarding both points. But with some plugins, Dokuwiki can be used as simple blog engine.

By the way, what to do with such security issues? https://github.com/b2evolution/b2evolution/issues/109

@nomad wrote earlier:

By the way, what to do with such security issues? https://github.com/b2evolution/b2evolution/issues/109

I think someone from the core devs of b2evo should reach out, provide an e-mail address, and hear what this is about. Even @fplanque noted that he will look after security issues ("At this point my only motivation regarding b2evolution is to keep it running without severe bugs and without security issues.") If we do not respond to the researcher, he will have the moral right to disclose it to the public, so we should appreciate the heads-up and hope that either it's not a real issue or an easy fix...