APBoard Next Generation

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APBoard NG

Official website	https://www.apboard.de/
Live instance	https://main.apboard.de/
Development instance	https://dev.apboard.de/
GitLab	https://gitlab.apboard.de/app/apboard3
Contact	info@apboard.de
License	GNU General Public License v3

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Description

The APBoard was a very extensive, modular discussion forum system with portal, news, polls, private messages, many plugins and add-ons, and much more. Back in 1998, when it was built by Christin, it was revolutionary.

Christin Löhner was formerly known as Alexander Mieland (dma147). As Alexander, or dma147, she built the first APBoard with PHP3 in 1998 and continued to develop it all by herself until 2002. Then Lacritima, Relict and Funlex joined her and helped her develop the APBoard further. One of the first APBoard versions later became the very famous Woltlab Burning Board (version wwb1, later versions were completely redeveloped). In a very short time, a huge and great community formed around the APBoard. Many hundreds of thousands of people actively participated in the support forum, and the APBoard was downloaded, installed, and used millions of times. For some time even the game company Ubisoft used the APBoard for their support forum. Since 2006 the APBoard was not further developed and was discontinued. But from 2000 until today there is one APBoard that has kept running quite persistently and successfully: http://www.rcpanzer.de/apboard/.

Christin is a woman with a trans* past. She changed her first name and gender registration in 2016, which explains the name change from Alexander to Christin. In 2018, she had gender reassignment surgery and has since fully arrived as a woman. Since then, she has been fighting for rights, a better life, and less discrimination against trans* people. You can read more about her here: https://r3y.de/ich (German)

The old APBoard lay in the back corner on a backup disk for many, many years. But now Christin has brought it out again. In honor of rcpanzer.de, and because she finds it exciting to get her old software working again under modern circumstances, she wants to revive the APBoard and develop it further in up-to-date environments.

Christin tried for a few weeks in 2023 to bring the old APBoard to a current state, but concluded that it did not make sense. Instead, she started from scratch and created the APBoard Next Generation. Development started on 12 June 2023.

And the best part: it will always be Open Source under the GNU General Public License and free as in Free Software. Everyone can download and install it themselves.

Many great and modern forum systems are really expensive. We just want to bring the good old APBoard back to life. This may be nostalgic - but hey, that's exactly what it is.

Developer Notes

We use Gitlab as our Git server for the development of the APBoard. This Gitlab server is hosted and maintained by Christin Löhner. Likewise, all developer instances (for example https://dev.apboard.de or also https://main.apboard.de) are hosted by Christin on the same server.

In Git we currently have only two main branches: master and develop. Each developer will get his own branch.

Each developer who wants to participate in bug fixing and further development gets their own branch and subdomain, into which their branch is automatically deployed.

The development flow looks like this:

1. The developer must ensure their branch is always up to date with the develop branch.
2. The developer fixes bugs or builds a new feature in their own branch.
3. On their own developer subdomain they can test whether the feature they built works correctly.
4. When done and fully tested, the developer may merge into the develop branch.
5. The developer should then initiate a review and ask Christin to take a look.
6. If everything is OK and working, Christin merges the changes into the master branch (go live).

If YOU would like to be part of this and help fix bugs or further develop APBoard, please contact Christin (info@apboard.de). She will take care of everything else.

Christin uses Visual Studio Code for development. If you also want to use VS Code, Christin can give you tips on which settings and extensions are useful.

Credits

Thanks to all the development helpers and modification writers of 2.2-EW1 and all the older APBoard versions:

Lacritima, Relict, Funlex, Snoopy, Stiwi, Ampfinger, Arne, Ascii, Bunny, Commander66, Darksky, Darth Paul, Der Al, Elton, Fabian, Floo, Hilfe_Fehler, Jörn, Manu, Markusw, MisterS, PG-Computer, Sir_Berick, Slanker, SuSeLinux, Temardo, The Master, Tool-Time, Voller17, Yyoshii and Zago.

This list does not claim to be complete. If someone does not find themselves listed here or has any other suggestions, please contact Christin.

The documentation for APBoard 2.1.0 and older was written by Christin Löhner (dma147), madsnake and lakeside.

We would also like to thank all still loyal users for their testing and suggestions.

A very, very special thank you goes to the people on rcpanzer.de, who still uses the APBoard from good old days! This community uses the old APBoard since way over 25 years and is still active! Maybe we may upgrade this APBoard somewhen to this Next Generation APBoard for the next 25 years?

Copyright

Copyright (c) 1998-2026 by Christin Löhner <info@apboard.de>