UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads Version 7/8 Support UBB.threads 8.1 — a few questions before we plan our upgrade

Hi all,

We run UBB.threads 8.0.1 on PHP 8.4 and are planning around 8.1.0. A few questions for the developers:

1. Database outages: can the "unable to connect to the database" page be customized, and could it send an HTTP 503 with Retry-After so search engines treat an outage as temporary?
2. SEO: are a <link rel="canonical"> tag and schema.org DiscussionForumPosting markup on topic pages planned?
3. PHP 8.2+: are the utf8_encode() calls and the "passing null to parameter" deprecation warnings addressed in 8.1.0?

Any rough idea of 8.1.0 timing would help too.

Thanks!

A few more items from running 8.0.1 on PHP 8.4, in case they help 8.1.0:

1. libs/ubbthreads.inc.php line 917 passes E_STRICT to error_reporting(). E_STRICT is deprecated in PHP 8.4, so it logs a deprecation on every request — about 99.7% of our forum's log lines. Removing E_STRICT from that line fixes it. That runtime error_reporting() call also overrides php.ini/.user.ini, so we can't quiet it from config.
2. The bundled Smarty predates PHP 8.1's nullable-parameter rule (deprecations in smarty_resource.php, smarty_internal_data.php, Smarty.class.php). A Smarty refresh would clear them.
3. iOS Safari: the head emits a viewport without shrink-to-fit=no, and a second viewport from a theme competes with it, so tables shrink after rotating. One viewport tag with shrink-to-fit=no fixes it.
4. ultimatebb.cgi (legacy stub) prints "HTTP/1.1 301" — under CGI it needs "Status: 301", so old links get a 500.
5. credits.md still says 8.0.0 after the 8.0.1 patch.
6. Control Panel > Paths & Database can't save new DB credentials once the old ones stop working (the save needs a live connection), and fails silently.
7. ubbthreads.php?ubb=grabnext returns 200 even with junk parameters, giving search engines one extra URL per post.

Thanks!

re ubbt 8.1.0
1. error reporting has been cleaned up for php 8.5
2. smarty is updated from 4 to 5.8
3. will look at that and have it fixed for the ubbt 8.1 release. most of the dev is done using chrome, firefox and ofc edge. thank you for catching and reporting the strays from safari
4. hmm. wasnt aware that perl (cgi) was still being used outside of the forwarders for ubb from early 2000s. i'll take a look into this, as its something i also use on a few personal sites XD thank you
5. hot patches dont usually update the credits or general readme text files. but 8.1 will be a full update, and these docs will reflex the changes.
6 & 7 looking into these now. thank you! expect fixes for ubbt 8.1

ubbt 8.1 is fully checked to work on php 8.5 (php8 and newer)