2012-07-18, 12:06 AM
Hi, this tutorial is going to show you how to make a successful MyBB Board with many other tips. This is my first tutorial and I'm not an advanced MyBB user so if I missed out something, please let me know.
Contents
So lets start.
General
We are going to discuss what type of you forum you are going to create. You can make a board of your choice but do a research and lookup how many similar sites there are on MyBB. For example: If I'm creating a wrestling forum so I'm going to first find out how many wrestling forums there are. If they aren't too much then I'm good to go, because if there is too much competition then you can't expect your forum to be active for a few good months. You always want your business to be unique and if there's too much competition and you are a beginner then it's going to be hard for you.
Another thing, during advertisements don't ever spam on another site. People are going to find it annoying and not visit it.
If you are going to make a website, you should be ready to invest some money. You would need a good domain, hosting and a premium theme(Premium because the free ones are saturated/overused).
Domain tips
- Don't make the domain too long
- Must not be confusing, includes a lot of special characters
- Domain must be good not messed up. Ex: Good domain can be like myboard.com NOT [email protected].
Name Suggestions
It's hard to come up with a name but always think of the keywords of your website and make a url out of that. For example: My website is about hacking. So Hack is a keyword and it's a forums site not a social networking site so combine them which adds up to hackforums. Such domains are good for SEO.
Hosting
Now a hosting is the most important thing if you are setting up a MyBB Board.
You can find a good list of hosting providers here.
If you are buying a hosting then I would recommend you to have enough money so that you can afford the hosting for another 3-5 months.
The reason why I say 3-5 months is because lets say for example, it can take 1 month to setup the site etc, another month is when you start advertising and at this moment you can not restrict your members from accessing specific stuff. You want people to stay on the website and not make them think that "It's a site and I can't do much stuff. Why not leave the site", this will increase the inactivity and another month will get you started with some High Quality and active contributers. So 3 months in total, it CAN take longer.
When you are buying a hosting, it's not necessary to buy a expensive hosting for the first 2 months because at this moment you will have less members so if you receive downtimes then it's OK because it's the time for moderation and it's your site so you are not going to ever leave it.
What I do is, I buy a cheap hosting for the first 2 months>Migrate to a better but STILL cheap hosting then why my website picks up then I go for some good hosting with excellent uptime.
P.S: Do a research before buying a hosting and look at retailmenot.com for discounts.
Installing
Honestly, my 13 yr old cousin can even install a copy of MyBB. It's easy and well-explained in the install document which comes with the download package.
Let me break it down into easy steps, but before we start with installing your board. You are required to have a domain a hosting. For a domain you can use 1and1, netfirms, godaddy or whatever you are comfortable with.
Download the latest package from http://www.mybb.com/
Then head over to your CPanel then click on MySQL Databases then create a database. After that, scroll down and create a user. THE USER YOU CREATE HERE WILL NOT BE YOUR FORUM ADMIN
After you have created a DB and a User, go on the homepage of your cpanel and click on File Manager. Then upload all the files in the "upload" folder. This means go into the upload folder, press ctrl + A and extract it to a .zip not .rar file. Then go to your File Manager and upload the .zip file to public_html folder.
P.S: The config file and the settings file will come empty as default, after you install the board the files are automatically filled with the needed information.
Now go to yoursite.com/install. For example my domain is facebook.com so I will go to facebook.com/install.
Then it will take you to a install page, I can't help with you that anymore.
Security Tips
The following tips are from the "User Submitted Tutorials" section.
Drop Down Reported Posts Menu (Provides reporting options for your members to report, instead of the long text report) :- http://community.mybb.com/thread-113748.html
Disposable Email Blocks (List of spam emails to block, go to ACP>Setting> Banning) :- http://community.mybb.com/thread-92228.html
MyBB PHP Website Firewall (XSS Protection, Union SQL Protection, Small DDOS Protection and more) :- http://community.mybb.com/thread-103695.html
Add secret PIN to ACP login (Add a secret pin to your admin login page so if a hacker has login details, they still would have to figure out the pin) :- http://community.mybb.com/thread-105587.html
6 Methods to protect your MyBB forums :- http://community.mybb.com/thread-44977.html
Another tip I would give is always upgrade to the latest version because they fix a lot of vulnerabilities which can be used to Hack or Deface your website.
One more thing, before downloading any plugin be sure to check if it's vulnerable or not. Type the plugin name on Google appending mybb vulnerable. Example: plugin name mybb vulnerable
**NOTE: Backup your website daily. I normally backup my website via my FTP weekly and ACP daily.
To backup your website from FTP, follow the instructions below.
Go to file manager>Public_HTML>Select all>Compress to .tar>Download the .tar file from the file manager.
To backup your website from ACP, follow the instructions below.
Login to your ACP>Tools & Maintenance> Database Backups> Create new Backup>Select all and make sure it's a download to your PC.
I would also recommend having a look at this SPAM prevention guide below.
http://community.mybb.com/thread-116438.html
Content, Members and Theme
Theme
Always ask someone to make you a theme or buy a premium theme.
Members
Create 1 test account to test everything. Request each Mod/Admin to make a fake account so they can post as them as well. Look for some paid posters and use them for a month or so, then start advertising. You want posts and discussions so people could stay and post and not be like it's a new and dead forum, F'K it.
Content
Find out what's trending and post those topics so it that you can get some visitors. Think of the present and future, don't ever think of the past when it comes to your forums. Don't always post as an admin, keep some forums where it's not only admins posting so people know that there are some active members. Look at some sites most visited searches and create similar pages/threads.
Performance
I would recommend using Cloudflare, it's not a DDoS Protection but it does help against minor attacks. Cloudflare is a very good company that helps boost/increase the speed etc. The setting I would recommend is the medium security setting for new boards also never turn on Autominify or Rocket Loader.
Have a look at the following tutorial for 9 more tricks that can help boost your forum speed.
http://community.mybb.com/thread-93652.html
That's all. Hope you liked my tutorial/guide. I would appreciate any feedbacks. It took me about 1 hour and so plus I have a very slow internet connection.
Contents
- General
- Hosting
- How to Install your board
- Security Tips
- Content, Appearance and Members.
- Performance
So lets start.
General
We are going to discuss what type of you forum you are going to create. You can make a board of your choice but do a research and lookup how many similar sites there are on MyBB. For example: If I'm creating a wrestling forum so I'm going to first find out how many wrestling forums there are. If they aren't too much then I'm good to go, because if there is too much competition then you can't expect your forum to be active for a few good months. You always want your business to be unique and if there's too much competition and you are a beginner then it's going to be hard for you.
Another thing, during advertisements don't ever spam on another site. People are going to find it annoying and not visit it.
If you are going to make a website, you should be ready to invest some money. You would need a good domain, hosting and a premium theme(Premium because the free ones are saturated/overused).
Domain tips
- Don't make the domain too long
- Must not be confusing, includes a lot of special characters
- Domain must be good not messed up. Ex: Good domain can be like myboard.com NOT [email protected].
Name Suggestions
It's hard to come up with a name but always think of the keywords of your website and make a url out of that. For example: My website is about hacking. So Hack is a keyword and it's a forums site not a social networking site so combine them which adds up to hackforums. Such domains are good for SEO.
Hosting
Now a hosting is the most important thing if you are setting up a MyBB Board.
You can find a good list of hosting providers here.
If you are buying a hosting then I would recommend you to have enough money so that you can afford the hosting for another 3-5 months.
The reason why I say 3-5 months is because lets say for example, it can take 1 month to setup the site etc, another month is when you start advertising and at this moment you can not restrict your members from accessing specific stuff. You want people to stay on the website and not make them think that "It's a site and I can't do much stuff. Why not leave the site", this will increase the inactivity and another month will get you started with some High Quality and active contributers. So 3 months in total, it CAN take longer.
When you are buying a hosting, it's not necessary to buy a expensive hosting for the first 2 months because at this moment you will have less members so if you receive downtimes then it's OK because it's the time for moderation and it's your site so you are not going to ever leave it.
What I do is, I buy a cheap hosting for the first 2 months>Migrate to a better but STILL cheap hosting then why my website picks up then I go for some good hosting with excellent uptime.
P.S: Do a research before buying a hosting and look at retailmenot.com for discounts.
Installing
Honestly, my 13 yr old cousin can even install a copy of MyBB. It's easy and well-explained in the install document which comes with the download package.
Let me break it down into easy steps, but before we start with installing your board. You are required to have a domain a hosting. For a domain you can use 1and1, netfirms, godaddy or whatever you are comfortable with.
Download the latest package from http://www.mybb.com/
Then head over to your CPanel then click on MySQL Databases then create a database. After that, scroll down and create a user. THE USER YOU CREATE HERE WILL NOT BE YOUR FORUM ADMIN
After you have created a DB and a User, go on the homepage of your cpanel and click on File Manager. Then upload all the files in the "upload" folder. This means go into the upload folder, press ctrl + A and extract it to a .zip not .rar file. Then go to your File Manager and upload the .zip file to public_html folder.
P.S: The config file and the settings file will come empty as default, after you install the board the files are automatically filled with the needed information.
Now go to yoursite.com/install. For example my domain is facebook.com so I will go to facebook.com/install.
Then it will take you to a install page, I can't help with you that anymore.
Security Tips
The following tips are from the "User Submitted Tutorials" section.
Drop Down Reported Posts Menu (Provides reporting options for your members to report, instead of the long text report) :- http://community.mybb.com/thread-113748.html
Disposable Email Blocks (List of spam emails to block, go to ACP>Setting> Banning) :- http://community.mybb.com/thread-92228.html
MyBB PHP Website Firewall (XSS Protection, Union SQL Protection, Small DDOS Protection and more) :- http://community.mybb.com/thread-103695.html
Add secret PIN to ACP login (Add a secret pin to your admin login page so if a hacker has login details, they still would have to figure out the pin) :- http://community.mybb.com/thread-105587.html
6 Methods to protect your MyBB forums :- http://community.mybb.com/thread-44977.html
Another tip I would give is always upgrade to the latest version because they fix a lot of vulnerabilities which can be used to Hack or Deface your website.
One more thing, before downloading any plugin be sure to check if it's vulnerable or not. Type the plugin name on Google appending mybb vulnerable. Example: plugin name mybb vulnerable
**NOTE: Backup your website daily. I normally backup my website via my FTP weekly and ACP daily.
To backup your website from FTP, follow the instructions below.
Go to file manager>Public_HTML>Select all>Compress to .tar>Download the .tar file from the file manager.
To backup your website from ACP, follow the instructions below.
Login to your ACP>Tools & Maintenance> Database Backups> Create new Backup>Select all and make sure it's a download to your PC.
I would also recommend having a look at this SPAM prevention guide below.
http://community.mybb.com/thread-116438.html
Content, Members and Theme
Theme
Always ask someone to make you a theme or buy a premium theme.
Members
Create 1 test account to test everything. Request each Mod/Admin to make a fake account so they can post as them as well. Look for some paid posters and use them for a month or so, then start advertising. You want posts and discussions so people could stay and post and not be like it's a new and dead forum, F'K it.
Content
Find out what's trending and post those topics so it that you can get some visitors. Think of the present and future, don't ever think of the past when it comes to your forums. Don't always post as an admin, keep some forums where it's not only admins posting so people know that there are some active members. Look at some sites most visited searches and create similar pages/threads.
Performance
I would recommend using Cloudflare, it's not a DDoS Protection but it does help against minor attacks. Cloudflare is a very good company that helps boost/increase the speed etc. The setting I would recommend is the medium security setting for new boards also never turn on Autominify or Rocket Loader.
Have a look at the following tutorial for 9 more tricks that can help boost your forum speed.
http://community.mybb.com/thread-93652.html
That's all. Hope you liked my tutorial/guide. I would appreciate any feedbacks. It took me about 1 hour and so plus I have a very slow internet connection.