Quote:Very easy if you use MyBB.
For many of the users here, yes. For brand new users new to MyBB or forums in general it's not. But MyBB out of all the other forum software is the simplest and easiest to learn, granted. But the point still stands, there needs to be a compromise in my opinion. Else you may as well put "Use MyBB if you're comfortable making big changes to make it unique" on the homepage.
Quote:I think if you want every bell and whistle under the sun then maybe MyBB isn't for you. Every feature that's part of base adds to the learning curve as well. Simply because it's part of code base doesn't automatically mean it's understood by a new admin. When was the last time you looked at an admincp of VB? It's a mess. It should be a lesson on what MyBB should NOT do. The XenForo admincp is pretty good but reality is that they don't really have a ton of features in comparison to VB.
I still see people ask for plugins to add groups or other features that are part of default MyBB.
Oh definitely, I agree there. The vBulletin ACP is horrifically bad. IPB and Xenforo have a pretty awesome ACP though, MyBB is in the same league as them when it comes to a user-friendly ACP. I definitely would not want to see a boat load of featuers 1/10 forum owners use in the core. And yeah so do I, you'll always get users doing that though, some are too lazy to just look around and explore.
Quote:And I know notifications seems to be a hot button and I'm not against them being added to base. I just would not advise a new admin to enable it. Example is how negative reps are now allowed to be disabled and in all honesty most sites should disallow negs unless they run a marketplace or want users to flame each other.
Agreed again. Negative reputation serves no purpose unless as you say, you run a market place. Even then it's not the most useful thing in the world. I don't personally see how notifications will have that affect though? The sole purpose of it is to notify the users if anything note worthy has happened that involves you.
For example, someone quotes you, unless you go to that thread and read the unread posts you will never know that someone has replied to your post. Missing quotes happens a lot as your board gets bigger but I obviously don't need to tell you that, lol. Very useful though in my opinion.
Quote:And there is that. Uniqueness can easily be lost. I find more and more VB board boring because they are not unique enough from each other. Sure design may be different but few are bothering now to have custom plugins to enhance their site. Addons and plugins that are built specific for a forum are a lot of what can make it a success. Example is the garage that pavemen runs. If some form of his plugin was part of base and 20 clones sites popped up he might not be as much of a success. Competitively you need some sort of edge.
Agreed again. If every feature requested gets put into core, not only do you have more load, you have less chance at being the MyBB forum people want to talk about and be like. I'm a massive fanboy on uniqueness as most people know, I, like you, wouldn't want that to be compromised but I don't think it will be here - the development team luckily aren't trigger-happy with an overload of features.
Quote:I know new admins have limits but if they want to succeed they have to rely on a lot more than the software. Clicking install will not be enough no matter how many features are part of base package.
Nice convo btw.
Definitely. It's good that we're talking about it in general here. The fact that MyBB is in a place where people are requesting features that big companies are using in their software shows how good we are for a free open source project.
Been good fun discussing this
I so badly want to learn Yii and a bit more PHP and help the team. But I am underage (great — now I gave the "MyBB is for cheap kids" trolls another post to quote — but I am not cheap at all).
I just have to wait.... Oh 4 years.
I am understanding MVC now, know OOP, but I just need to tweak my skills and get better with Yii specifically...
To add now that I read this page:
I don't want every feature as core. But there are some just so deeply built into society right now. MyBB has to modernize a bit, compromise some. Notifications would be a nice way to replace email. But the issue with replacing email is that people might forget your forum. An email in their inbox sometimes encourages a person to come back.
But notifications are so popular now. I think it is something to be seriously considered and not laughed off. People want constant feedback on what is happening around them. They want that instantaneous notice.
Again, I don't want every feature. If a shout box, for example, was added, I would need to move hosts. My host does not allow shout boxes because of the MySQL resources used.
(2012-03-28, 01:54 AM)GamerVoid Wrote: [ -> ]I so badly want to learn Yii and a bit more PHP and help the team. But I am underage (great — now I gave the "MyBB is for cheap kids" trolls another post to quote — but I am not cheap at all).
I just have to wait.... Oh 4 years.
I am understanding MVC now, know OOP, but I just need to tweak my skills and get better with Yii specifically.
Thirteen... not bad... I didn't start PHP/MyBB until a little over a year ago (sixteen)
Not quite 13, just under 2 months until my birthday.
That's incredible, I wish I was that tuned in at that age.
(2012-03-28, 02:04 AM)Paul H. Wrote: [ -> ]Thirteen... not bad... I didn't start PHP/MyBB until a little over a year ago (sixteen)
Same here. I wish I would have started it at 13.
I owe my learning of PHP all to MyBB (and a little from a name-which-I-will-not-mention). It being coded in PHP made me really want to learn PHP so I could tweak it if needed.
I have no regrets learning it now. I am developing a custom CRM for my dad right now with what I've learned. I could just give him one already made, but I kinda want the challenge. I learned that I needed to prefix $this-> to function calls tonight (which took 20mins to finally Google search!).
* Josh H. wishes to stop derailing this thread
* Josh H. makes a magical-sounding sound, kind of like pixie dust — err, sorta.
Quote:For example, someone quotes you, unless you go to that thread and read the unread posts you will never know that someone has replied to your post. Missing quotes happens a lot as your board gets bigger but I obviously don't need to tell you that, lol. Very useful though in my opinion.
That's a newer feature in the forum world. Forums have done just fine without it. What's next? A notification when someone visits your profile? I mean really is being quoted so vital to know about? If you're following a thread you can subscribe to it. You're part of the overall discussion. You being quoted should not be a requirement for your interest or participation. I don't think it's a useful thing at all. If every member of your site had this notification on just think about how many emails and PMs will be sent out. Next you'll want the notifications to also include the actual reply. Bah....the whole thing is imho dumb. Really that's how I feel. I'm just as adamantly against shoutboxes and have been for years.
Quote: Else you may as well put "Use MyBB if you're comfortable making big changes to make it unique" on the homepage.
Who said "big changes"? With MyBB customizing with plugins is very easy. A lot of big boards run 20, 30 or some over 50 plugins. At HF I think I counted recently about 60 most in the admincp.
Quote:For example, someone quotes you, unless you go to that thread and read the unread posts you will never know that someone has replied to your post.
You realize that's what you want members to do though. Browse your forum and visit pages. You're only allowing members to be lazy. From an admin standpoint it actually can decrease activity. Why bother coming back to visit a thread 10 times seeing responses when you have notifications for when you're quoted? And if you're gonna argue that you read threads even when not quoted because you're participating in the thread then WHY BOTHER WITH NOTIFICATIONS??? Where is the purpose? Play it out.
Quote:That's a newer feature in the forum world. Forums have done just fine without it. What's next? A notification when someone visits your profile? I mean really is being quoted so vital to know about? If you're following a thread you can subscribe to it. You're part of the overall discussion. You being quoted should not be a requirement for your interest or participation. I don't think it's a useful thing at all. If every member of your site had this notification on just think about how many emails and PMs will be sent out. Next you'll want the notifications to also include the actual reply. Bah....the whole thing is imho dumb. Really that's how I feel. I'm just as adamantly against shoutboxes and have been for years.
It's not about "forums doing fine", it's about exceeding fine and becoming great. I, as a webmaster, want to make sure every single thing I can do to make sure the users experience on my forum is more than fine, I will do. It depends on your attitude on it. At one stage of a forum, when it's getting stupidly big, you need to say "No, I'll do what I want to the forum, I know best". However, in early stages I think it's best to let the users request what they want and give it to them if it's no harm to the site. Obviously your opinion still stands tall, I'd never add a shoutbox if someone asked me.
Now about the quoting thing, that's just one example. Doesn't subscribing to a thread anyway give out more PM's/Emails than notifications? You don't get a PM, you just get a little alert at the top when quoted, if you subscribe, every single reply results in an email. Notifications are also used to notify someone if they get an award for example, or if they have a post that was liked, or if someone replied to the thread they made. Generally, it boosts activity, I can't see how someone can deny that.
Quote:Who said "big changes"? With MyBB customizing with plugins is very easy. A lot of big boards run 20, 30 or some over 50 plugins. At HF I think I counted recently about 60 most in the admincp.
True, but how many MyBB forums out there now are completely unique with the plugins they've installed from here and MyBBCentral? If someone didn't have money, and didn't know php, what would one do to make their board original (presuming they don't know css/html to make the style unique)? I mean completely original. You even said yourself a lot of those 60 plugins are yours, a lot completely unique to HF (all be it probably performance based). To summarise, there needs to be at least one awesome globally used feature in the core of MyBB, I don't know a more useful one than notifications.
Quote:You realize that's what you want members to do though. Browse your forum and visit pages. You're only allowing members to be lazy. From an admin standpoint it actually can decrease activity. Why bother coming back to visit a thread 10 times seeing responses when you have notifications for when you're quoted? And if you're gonna argue that you read threads even when not quoted because you're participating in the thread then WHY BOTHER WITH NOTIFICATIONS??? Where is the purpose? Play it out.
That's a really good reply actually. However I don't think having a notifications plugin would result members in being lazy, as it doesn't tell you if someone else has made a thread. They would still be browsing the sections they're interested in for new topics they can reply too. Trust me I understand your point, but I think generally user satisfaction is up there as one of the most important things on a forum, and this plugin gives a user a lot of satisfaction. It's not like a shoutbox where users chatting with each other would naturally decrease the posts occurring on the forum.
* pavemen is going to derail a bit
* pavemen released quote_notice plugin a while back that gives users the option to get PM'd when they are quoted in a post (first level quote only)
http://www.communityplugins.com/forum/my...down&did=9
So this problem is solved.....