MyBB still viable option?

[JayCeeS]

Let me start out saying I am a hard core IPB user, and at one time I was really active in the over all forum universe in keeping up with what vB, MyBB, SMF, etc.. was up to, XF was still a very very brand new thing, now I just operate a single site and am very much out of the loop on anything else.

Anyway, a friend whom split off from my group for personal conflict with a few of my members wants her own site (same niche, no worries on competition) and I am willing to help her set up something but has to be free cuz she lacks the funds for a paid forum. So MyBB was the top dog of the freebies a few years ago, is it still the best?

I have looked at SMF, not much more impressed than I was with it several years ago :/

 

[Solidus]

MyBB is still king of free forum software to me, but still way behind paid options (other than vBullcrap).

 

[LeadCrow]

MyBB is still the best at offering classic forum experience, with an especially high drop-in replacement value for other classic scripts and vBulletin.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I feel that MyBB has a good spot in the world of free forum software. They update more regularly than other free platforms and many people still use MyBB. I however, see a lot of missing opportunities with MyBB and other free forum software alike. These free platform providers need to quit treating their software as take-it-or-leave-it solutions and start treating it like it is a paid platform to really see results.

Just because you are not selling the software licenses doesn't mean you are not trying to get your fans to buy the software. They buy it by using it, creating a successful forum and showing that they did it using MyBB, no monies have to be involved in all sales of a forum platform.

That is how I feel about it, at least!

 

[mysiteguy]

Shawn,

phpBB took that approach, treating it professionally, for a long time. They were successful with it. I am not sure when, but somewhere along the line they lost this approach... and not phpBB is not the favorite it once was.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

It is a commitment if you decide to use that approach. You have commit to it and create a trend within the community to keep it going. We do it all the time with our forums in other circumstances and we all know that you have to keep at it otherwise the forum will start to drop down the 'food chain' of the niche.

 

[Jayfore]

I have been using MyBB since 2010 and am still very happy with it. The upcoming new version should add a number of the more modern features, too, which is great.

 

[marcgo15]

I've been using it since early days. I agree it has that classic feel something I like while still offering a powerful solution. Can't go wrong with it.

 

[Cafonauta]

BTW I gave a quick look at https://theadminzone.com/threads/show-us-your-mybb.30078/

Except one forum all the rest are unavailable or the current version uses Xenforo or IPB....

What does it means?

 

[DonCoryon]

I just started my board with MyBB. It's working really well so far. I haven't ran into any, "Oh no, I need to do some code," yet. That's a good thing. At least for me lol.

 

[Tracy Perry]

Except one forum all the rest are unavailable or the current version uses Xenforo or IPB....

For me it meant that I had taken a site offline that was getting no traffic and had a spare XenForo license.... so I moved it over to it.
I still have a myBB site up... it's just not advertised in that area and isn't advertised anywhere - it was more of a "hobby" site for me if I get the funds to buy the equipment (one thing that I'd love to have) to use to post related topical info.

 

[thunderclap]

I just migrated a huge community to MyBB from vBulletin 4 and besides some minor growing pains it's been a refreshing experience.

 

[mysiteguy]

Define "huge". ?????

 

[thunderclap]

Define "huge". ?????

14k threads with nearly 300k posts. That's pretty big to me.

 

[Typoon]

URL?

 

[Spiralcannon2-CW]

MyBB was suggested to me by a friend in real life - I have been using it for a while and it seems a very simple to use, professional, and extendable forum software.

My dream would be to use IP.Board because I fell in love with that the day I used it (and found more info about it), but MyBB is very good!

 

[The Sandman]

My dream would be to use IP.Board because I fell in love with that the day I used it (and found more info about it)

Used it as a member, or as an administrator?

 

[BioWarfare]

MyBB is a great software that I've used for the last 4 years and just recently switched to XenForo this year. I have to say that MyBB has a lot of really cool plugins but it just isn't capable of doing what I need it to. I really appreciate the out of box features on XenForo. It took a while of getting used to. I would highly recommend MyBB as a starter software because it's free and easy to use.

 

[DanielGarneau]

MyBB is a great software that I've used for the last 4 years and just recently switched to XenForo this year. I have to say that MyBB has a lot of really cool plugins but it just isn't capable of doing what I need it to. I really appreciate the out of box features on XenForo. It took a while of getting used to. I would highly recommend MyBB as a starter software because it's free and easy to use.

Hello BioWarfare,

Could you provide examples of things you were not able to do with MyBB but can with XF?

Thank you!

 

[BioWarfare]

Hello BioWarfare,

Could you provide examples of things you were not able to do with MyBB but can with XF?

Thank you!

Honestly, you can use MyBB plugins to duplicate all XenForo features on the external. But they do not work as well. Profile comments, alerts, post ratings, popups, footer, media gallery, etc. can be plugins on MyBB. Most of them are actually. However, I do not like having so many plugins and relying heavily on customizing a theme to fit all of these plugins.

Something I like to look at is the difference between my XF forum and MyBB forum. Before I upgraded to XF, both of these forums looked pretty identical structure and theme wise. Look at what I was able to achieve with XF compared to where my creativity ran out on MyBB.

http://codglitches.com
http://cod4zone.com