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ATDT 1.7.4

Free and MIT licensed. No account, no telemetry, no upsell, no paid tier waiting behind a feature you want. Take it, run it, change it.

Download atdt-bbs-latest.zip Try the demo board first

Version1.7.4

ReleasedSeptember 2, 2026

Release notesSee the changelog

LicenseMIT

SourceIncluded in the zip

1.7.4 fixes door games on MySQL boards. If your board runs MySQL or MariaDB, every door crashed on its second visit. It was a difference in how the two database engines count a row you updated to the value it already had. Upgrade and the same board on the same database simply works; nothing needs cleaning up.

1.7.3 put a cursor at every prompt and made the logon tour yours to arrange, or to silence entirely so callers land straight at the main menu.

1.7.2 gave DOS doors a daily maintenance hook, so a door that needs a program run once a day (TradeWars 2002, Usurper) gets it from the first solo caller after midnight, the way a BBS event worked in 1993.

Read the changelog →

What your host needs

PHP 8.1 or newer Extensions pdo · mbstring · json · openssl · session Database pdo_sqlite (recommended) or pdo_mysql Hosting any writable web directory · cron optional, never required

If you are not sure whether your host qualifies, upload the folder and open install.php. The first screen checks everything above and tells you plainly what is missing, if anything. Nothing is written until you get past it.

Installing

Upload the contents of atdt/ to your web space. The web root or a subdirectory both work.
Visit install.php in a browser and follow the four screens.
Pick SQLite unless you have a reason not to. It needs no setup at all.
Name your board, pick your handle and password, choose a timezone. Done.

The installer prints a cron line at the end. Adding it is optional: with no cron entry at all the board runs its own housekeeping on caller traffic instead. The full walkthrough is chapter 2 of the manual.

Upgrading from an earlier version

Upload the new files over the old ones. The zip carries no data/ folder, so an overwrite cannot touch your board.
Any database migration runs by itself on the next page load, under a lock, and every step is safe to re-run.
Skipped versions are fine. The migration is a ladder. A board arriving from any older release climbs every rung in one go, so there is no need to install intermediate versions and no penalty for sitting out a few.
The console footer shows the running version, so you can confirm the upgrade landed.
install.php reappearing is harmless. It sees the existing board and locks itself.

Backing it up

Everything that is yours lives in data/: the configuration, the database, your themes, the art gallery, your door storage. Copy that one folder and you have the whole board. Copy it back and it is running again. On MySQL, dump the database too. The one thing outside data/ is any door you installed yourself, which lives in doors/.

Know when the next one lands

New versions do not announce themselves. Leave your address and you will hear when there is a release worth upgrading for.

Release news only. Never sold, never shared. One click to leave. Past issues and RSS if you would rather not hand over an address at all.

What you can do with it

ATDT is released under the MIT license. Run a board for anything, modify the engine, write and sell door games, redistribute your own build. The only condition is that the copyright notice travels with the code. Read the license →