MyBB still viable option?

[Spiralcannon2-CW]

Used it as a member, or as an administrator?

I used it at a member.
Still my favourite board software, it's a shame I see less of it these days.

 

[Sal Collaziano]

I'm anxious to see MYBB 2.0. I definitely feel it's still a viable option.

 

[nasuke87]

i'm happy with mybb, using since i was at college which around 8 years ago

 

[CovertWarfare]

I like MyBB a lot, but only because it's an early fork of XMB, and the user experience and overall aesthetics of MyBB are much more modernized. I fell in love with XMB in 2003. Out of the box, it was pretty generic, but the possibilities for customization seemed endless. Invision was my second favorite back then too, and PhpBB has always seemed atrocious to me.

 

[Jason5]

I was also using MyBB for 3 years and i thought of giving another forum software a try. So MyBB met its end with me..But it was great, simple, with lot of addons, themes and people to help you.

 

[Mount Zion]

MyBB is amazing. Looks good and very easy for modifications/upgrades. No complaints. Oh and it's free!

 

[Technologx]

In my opinion MyBB is good but I done some modifications to the software and it started acting up on me so I went back to IPB. I used phpBB once and really liked it has a good variety of addons and themes also great support forum.

 

[Senpie]

MyBB is still a viable option, and once 2.0 is released it will be ahead of XenForo.

 

[andrew3d]

MyBB is still a viable option, and once 2.0 is released it will be ahead of XenForo.

This is quite a claim to say it will be ahead of XenForo.

I would like to hear why do you think so....

 

[GTB]

Interesting move that MyBB 2.0 minimum PHP support will be PHP 7 required

First forum software I've seen doing that, bold move. But how long is MyBB 2.0 away yet? Years???

If so guess most shared hosting will running PHP 7 by then anyway, seeing as it offers better performance boost for hosts now wanting to use it anyhow

https://blog.mybb.com/2016/08/17/shuttering-of-the-2-0-host-compatibility-repository/
https://community.mybb.com/thread-195675.html

 

[rafalp]

This is quite a claim to say it will be ahead of XenForo.

I would like to hear why do you think so....

Open source forums are smartening up and using popular frameworks instead of wasting time writing their own. This allows them to easily tap into existing ecosystems of frameworks components and developers that they can profit from for free. XenForo may be few developers working full time, but if you pick Laravel or Symfony or whichever popular framework is out there, you become one of the legion. That database quirk? That weirdness of Firefox's dom handling? That gotcha in twitter authentication? You'll likely never learn of any of those, because legion has worked them out for you..

...and once the legion notices you, you may offset lack of fulltime commitment to project with sheer amount of contributors helping you out.

 

[GTB]

I hope with MyBB 2 they RIP OUT that lame thing they call a "Portal page".

When I used MyBB years ago for a few years running it, I spent a lot of time rewriting the Portal page because it really is lame by default and you don't tend to see many MyBB sites turning that portal page on because of it.

 

[BioWarfare]

I hope with MyBB 2 they RIP OUT that lame thing they call a "Portal page".

When I used MyBB years ago for a few years running it, I spent a lot of time rewriting the Portal page because it really is lame by default and you don't tend to see many MyBB sites turning that portal page on because of it.

I hope they keep the portal. It's really nice to have by default if your forum publishes articles or news. I think it could be improved with some TLC too, though. But it's a great feature.

 

[BeyBrad]

I think MyBB is still viable, even if it's pretty archaic. I think what I'm building with 1.8 (work in progress with lots of buggy and incomplete parts, beware) is pretty nice, and I don't think it looks less modern than most forum software. However, you need to invest a ton of time and install a lot of plugins to get to something that's really good. MyBB's awesome plugin library is its greatest strength, of course, but there are a lot of parts of 1.8's core design that are in pretty bad shape. That would make me hesitant to recommend launching a new site or investing a ton of time into 1.8 now, despite me doing so. But I don't think I will be using 2.0 on my main project for a few years time time, even if launches next year.

The MyBB team knows the rough state of the existing software; 2.0 is looking to be something really cool. The focus appears to be on modularity, making it easy for admins to add and remove content blocks, restyle the theme, and ultimately build their own vision through the software, rather than the software dictating the vision (as is the case for most forum software today). It's a shame that it breaks compatibility with 1.8, but it's necessary to achieve that ambition. I have total faith in those guys.

As for the portal — it's not great, but you can do some cool things with if you put in the time. I was building this prototype in the portal page of MyBB:

 

[Tecca]

I just Googled and found this topic because I haven't used MyBB since 1.6 (still have an installation of it and although it was very financially successful, it's now a dead project). Seeing Brad go with 1.8 gives me faith that the software will suit my next project's needs, which I'll start the groundwork on today. I've always been a fan of what you've done with MyBB, BeyBrad, and was actually sad to see your Harajuju site go offline when I randomly visited a while back.

I've always been a fan of MyBB, it's suitable as a replacement for paid forum software, but yeah, it takes a lot of work to get it where you want it. But that sort of work is worth it no matter what software you're using, if you're really passionate about your website.

Gonna spin up 1.8 now and see how it goes!

 

[BeyBrad]

Wow Tecca, I am really moved by your post haha. Thank you! Harajuju just sort of ran its course, but there are a few obstinate friends that harass me to bring it back every now and then ... I can't ever see myself devoting more time to it, but it might be worth keeping online just as a piece of MyBB history lol.

I am using this theme, Respond, as the basis for my project. It itself is based on the Bootstrap framework. Having been out of web development for a long time, I was totally clueless about mobile responsive development and new properties, but Bootstrap allowed me to learn a lot and get a lot done really fast. Would totally recommend checking it out.

Get in touch if you wanna chat about your next project, always love to see new MyBB stuff I think you can go with MyBB if you accept that it's a relatively primitive piece of software that requires a lot of plugins and custom work, at least in the templates section, to make something really nice. But it's easily the most flexible of any forum software out there and all you need to know is extremely basic web development.

 

[euantor]

I'm obviously biased, so I won't be weighing in too much here, but will ty to answer any questions people may have.

Interesting move that MyBB 2.0 minimum PHP support will be PHP 7 required

First forum software I've seen doing that, bold move. But how long is MyBB 2.0 away yet? Years???

If so guess most shared hosting will running PHP 7 by then anyway, seeing as it offers better performance boost for hosts now wanting to use it anyhow

https://blog.mybb.com/2016/08/17/shuttering-of-the-2-0-host-compatibility-repository/
https://community.mybb.com/thread-195675.html

We're going with PHP 7 for 2.0 after having looked at what versions most major hosts use. We made the mistake in MyBB 1.8 of keeping backwards compatibility with PHP 5.2 which meant we couldn't add things like bcrypt password hashing (which would be way more secure than our current md5(md5(salt) + md5(password)) technique). We see 2.0 sticking around for a while, and basing the software on a version of PHP with a fairly long life ahead of it just makes sense to us.

We can also make use of nice features added in PHP 7 such as scalar type hints and function return type hints that help us validate the quality of the code we're writing a lot more easily (e.g.: the PHP engine will warn us during testing that we're passing a string to a function where it should be an integer - an obvious bug that's otherwise easy to miss).

Also worth noting is how long the PHP group are supporting PHP versions: http://php.net/supported-versions.php

PHP 5.3, 5.4 and 5.5 are all end of life releases now. 5.6 is only receiving active support until 31 Dec 2016. Even PHP 7.0 is only receiving active support until 3 Dec 2017.

By the time MyBB 2.0.0 is released (we're hoping to release a beta or alpha version this year, with a gold 2.0.0 release hopefully within the first half of 2017), PHP 7.0 will only have 6 months or so of active support left.

Hopefully that helps explain our decision making process and reasoning

 

[GTB]

By the time MyBB 2.0.0 is released (we're hoping to release a beta or alpha version this year, with a gold 2.0.0 release hopefully within the first half of 2017), PHP 7.0 will only have 6 months or so of active support left.

Well good luck if you manage to get a version of it out his year with a gold release done for next year. As all it seems you ever read these days with free forum software is them talking about losing developers, or they don't have same time for it given free anymore, things generally just moving way too slow.

Even Flarum has just made a post about them not doing things fast enough and seems to be a common problem with free forum software nowadays all across the board with them

 

[BioWarfare]

I just Googled and found this topic because I haven't used MyBB since 1.6 (still have an installation of it and although it was very financially successful, it's now a dead project). Seeing Brad go with 1.8 gives me faith that the software will suit my next project's needs, which I'll start the groundwork on today. I've always been a fan of what you've done with MyBB, BeyBrad, and was actually sad to see your Harajuju site go offline when I randomly visited a while back.

I've always been a fan of MyBB, it's suitable as a replacement for paid forum software, but yeah, it takes a lot of work to get it where you want it. But that sort of work is worth it no matter what software you're using, if you're really passionate about your website.

Gonna spin up 1.8 now and see how it goes!

Hey, I remember your Elder Scrolls Online forum. I haven't seen you since you posted the showcase thread for it on MyBB. I just checked the site again and it appears to have slowed down and if I am remembering correctly, you stepped down from admin? I always liked your sites because of how well and creative the designs were. Really nice work. Do you do it yourself?

 

[Tecca]

Hey, I remember your Elder Scrolls Online forum. I haven't seen you since you posted the showcase thread for it on MyBB. I just checked the site again and it appears to have slowed down and if I am remembering correctly, you stepped down from admin? I always liked your sites because of how well and creative the designs were. Really nice work. Do you do it yourself?

Hey there,

Yep, I do the designs on my sites myself, although sometimes I use a pre-made template to start off before heavy customization of it. I didn't step down as admin on TESOF, I had actually been bought out and hired on by Curse to run the site. Long story short, some things were supposed to happen but the company was, at the time, insanely busy. We were supposed to move away from MyBB altogether, but due to business of Curse, it never moved forward. From there, the site went fairly stagnant as it was more of a waiting game on getting over to the new platform (couldn't add any new features and I felt improving the current installation wasn't worth it since it'd be deprecated soon after). I'm not trying to lay blame on them at all though, Curse is a great company. They eventually decided to drop the project and hand it back to me, which I'm grateful for.

Thanks for the kind works!

My next project is going to be for another MMO (not released yet). The longevity of these types of games makes it a bit of a gamble when it comes to creating fan sites, but I've learned from past experience and feel this project could be successful as well, without the stagnation that happened on TESOF.