Skycoin BBS v5.0 Release Announcement

Skycoin BBS v5.0 has finally been released with many changes under the hood!

Thin Client

The most apparent change of all, is the introduction of the thin client. You can now access Skycoin BBS without setting up a node! Just head to bbs.skycoin.com.

In previous versions, one can only (and should only) access/submit content via a web user interface that is served locally. As this web-interface (and the API that it calls) has direct control over the node itself, and signs content with private keys that are stored in-node (or server-side), it is not appropriate to expose it to the public.

Hence, the introduction of a thin-client requires that user management, and the process of signing content for submission, to be handled client-side. This requires a completely revamped content-submission endpoint (or endpoints), and heavy changes to the front-end.

Details on the new content submission process can be found on the BBS Wiki: github.com/skycoin/bbs/wiki/Content-Submission-Process.

Currently, the front-end loads very slowly. This is caused from the use of GopherJS to handle seed and public/private key generation, as well has signing and verification of data. In future releases, we will make use of native JavaScript libraries to improve performance.

Command-line Interface

After the introduction of a publicly-visible thin-client, we removed API endpoints that handled administrative control and introduced a command-line interface to deal with such interactions.

More information on this can be found here: github.com/skycoin/bbs/tree/master/cmd/bbscli.

Other Improvements

• Improvements to Import/Export (unfortunately this is not backwards compatible with import/export for BBS v4.x)
• Simplifications to code and performance improvements for remote submission and interaction with Skycoin Messenger. Updated to use the latest Messenger.
• Improved file-management performance.
• Better handling of invalid CXO roots.
• Better handling of disconnections.

Downloads

To download BBS, head to github.com/skycoin/bbs/releases (source code will be here too).

Note that you can also access BBS via bbs.skycoin.com.

Documentation

We have started a wiki page at github.com/skycoin/bbs/wiki.

Please understand that this is still work in progress.

Community

We have a Telegram channel: @skycoinbbs.