I thought I would spark some thought provoking discussion on the future of Bulletin Board scripts and where they are headed.
I was thinking about it and it seems now that forums around the web are becoming fully featured by providing a simple, slick, and nice but clean feature set. The forums that tend to do well don't have a lot of shiny overbearing features, but a nice cozy place to discuss things. Modern scripts (Nodebb, Discourse, EsoTalk, and Vanilla come to mind) tend to include the features that all forums should come with obviously, and then the new social features that everyone wants like a notifications system, a simple like system and a more modern implementation of a badges system that integrates more nicely down to a per post basis. All of the futures however center around one thing, and that is the discussion. In the past forums needed other features to attract users. An arcade, money system with a random pointless shop, user blogs, extremely advanced profiles, etc. In the long run it does seem to me that, simple features integrated into the discussion more, are what win in the modern realm of forums.
Does it even make sense to include the ability to make plugins for your script anymore? I am asking this question from a user usability standpoint. It almost seems not needed to make a nice forum when it is built around a script made with the above comments. Ease of styling and ease of integration seem more important. Of course, from an open source development standpoint, the plugin authors of MyBB tend to contribute a gazillion of greatness back to the core of Mybb. If you removed the plugins on Mybb it would probably turn this community into nothing but a support and sell pretty themes forum. So it would be bad. But from the other standpoint it makes sense that it might not be quite so necessary anymore.
It seems to me that when it comes to forums, less is the new more.
I'm not a fan on the modern boards.
For me, they aren't really all that modern. Some are very basic in design and look like something a stone age man or women would use. I prefer the clean design of MyBB, IP.Board and others. If you took away the plugins, it would lose a lot of the appeal for me.
Plugins give a site owner a chance to add personality to the forums (as does the actual design/skin).
Considering VB was all the rage when they had the auto add mods/plugins, many have followed them. I can recall the days of inserting code by hand (IPB) and how painful it was to make a board stand out.
We could argue about social site(s) such as Facebook, yet for me MyBB and others will survive because of how easy they're customized and eventually these "modern" forums will have to reflect or find another gimmick. It's really down to personality and popularity, there will always be something different.
Until the features that many want are included in the core product, plugins will be essential to allow users to add them as needed. Just look at what has changed in 1.4, 1.6 and 1.8 and some of the features listed for 2.0. Most where all plugins or a variant of one at one point in time. The developers, especially for a free OSS like MyBB, need to focus on the core product and will integrate new features as tiem allows. Until then, users can contribute via plugins
Quote:Does it even make sense to include the ability to make plugins for your script anymore?
Absolutely. Whether it is extending functionality or getting rid of features, each forum is unique. It also would make it more difficult if you needed to upgrade and the only way to change how the software behaves is by file edits. Some people do enough business where they can get by just freelancing by making custom plugins for various softwares.
(2014-07-07, 08:20 PM)Kerrang! Wrote: [ -> ]For me, they aren't really all that modern. Some are very basic in design and look like something a stone age man or women would use. I prefer the clean design of MyBB, IP.Board and others. If you took away the plugins, it would lose a lot of the appeal for me.
I have to disagree with the text I made red. Mybb, IP.Board, and others like it are from the stone age. They've all been outdated in just about every way. I know Mybb uses tables for the templates, which is an argh. While working on the web portals we customize for clients at work, I have fixed many bugs by just simply removing the tables and using divs for layout. Recently we modernized the styling it by adding a very customized bootstrap. We've simplified things down to the point where it followed the basic design of other websites (except they still added gradients grrrrrrr) and have received all sorts of positive feedback about how much easier the system is from people who don't have a technical background. Following standards and putting together a simple website is cleaner than what Mybb and IPB have done. And that seems to be the future.
Everyone else, even a lot of the developers (I believe) admit that Mybb 1.8 is completely out of date. It's coming wayyyyy late in the game from when it should have been released. You seem to disagree. I'd bet that Mybb 2 will change that game though, and that you'd even like Mybb 2. I'm sure it will still have a plugin system (it better or I will even cry since I don't believe removing the plugin system is a good idea, even all the other modern boards still have plugin systems). But overall the design will be "modern."
(2014-07-07, 09:53 PM)dragonexpert Wrote: [ -> ]Absolutely. Whether it is extending functionality or getting rid of features, each forum is unique. It also would make it more difficult if you needed to upgrade and the only way to change how the software behaves is by file edits. Some people do enough business where they can get by just freelancing by making custom plugins for various softwares.
I do really like this answer especially for the bolded part. Using plugins to remove existing functionality that won't be necessary for your website is something I didn't think of when writing this post.
I believe the future of uniqueness may lie more in templates than in mods because the web isn't really all that unique anymore. People have expectations for how things behave and for what features should exist based on the website type. And those have all been standardized by various larger websites.
Sooooo everyone commented on the most radical idea of removing plugin systems altogether. What about the overall idea of the feature set moving away from adding additional functionality like arcades and points systems to features more tightly surrounding the actual discussion on the board? Has anyone else noticed this?
(2014-07-08, 02:20 PM)HolyPhoenix Wrote: [ -> ] (2014-07-07, 08:20 PM)Kerrang! Wrote: [ -> ]For me, they aren't really all that modern. Some are very basic in design and look like something a stone age man or women would use. I prefer the clean design of MyBB, IP.Board and others. If you took away the plugins, it would lose a lot of the appeal for me.
I have to disagree with the text I made red. Mybb, IP.Board, and others like it are from the stone age. They've all been outdated in just about every way. I know Mybb uses tables for the templates, which is an argh. While working on the web portals we customize for clients at work, I have fixed many bugs by just simply removing the tables and using divs for layout. Recently we modernized the styling it by adding a very customized bootstrap. We've simplified things down to the point where it followed the basic design of other websites (except they still added gradients grrrrrrr) and have received all sorts of positive feedback about how much easier the system is from people who don't have a technical background. Following standards and putting together a simple website is cleaner than what Mybb and IPB have done. And that seems to be the future.
Everyone else, even a lot of the developers (I believe) admit that Mybb 1.8 is completely out of date. It's coming wayyyyy late in the game from when it should have been released. You seem to disagree. I'd bet that Mybb 2 will change that game though, and that you'd even like Mybb 2. I'm sure it will still have a plugin system (it better or I will even cry since I don't believe removing the plugin system is a good idea, even all the other modern boards still have plugin systems). But overall the design will be "modern."
(2014-07-07, 09:53 PM)dragonexpert Wrote: [ -> ]Absolutely. Whether it is extending functionality or getting rid of features, each forum is unique. It also would make it more difficult if you needed to upgrade and the only way to change how the software behaves is by file edits. Some people do enough business where they can get by just freelancing by making custom plugins for various softwares.
I do really like this answer especially for the bolded part. Using plugins to remove existing functionality that won't be necessary for your website is something I didn't think of when writing this post.
I believe the future of uniqueness may lie more in templates than in mods because the web isn't really all that unique anymore. People have expectations for how things behave and for what features should exist based on the website type. And those have all been standardized by various larger websites.
Sooooo everyone commented on the most radical idea of removing plugin systems altogether. What about the overall idea of the feature set moving away from adding additional functionality like arcades and points systems to features more tightly surrounding the actual discussion on the board? Has anyone else noticed this?
And I have fixed many bugs by removing divs and using tables where they are needed. The problem with many web designers is that they start using divs for tabular data, as it's the "cool" thing to do and it becomes a headache.
I don't know about MyBB 2.0, as I remember people talking about it back in 2008 and development on it still hasn't started.
Maybe, in the 2020s. I might sound pessimistic about MyBB 2.0, but I have seen many estimates for it's
release come and go.
It's come to the point where MyBB 2.0 isn't even really an option which I consider for my sites anymore, as it's becoming more and more of a myth.
As for the plugin system, the MyBB Team would be stupid, if they removed it as it's one of MyBB's biggest selling points.
It's not even something which they should consider doing. The possibility of them doing that is completely and utterly ridiculous.
As far as MyBB is concerned, some of the features in the ACP can be fairly hard to find. For instance, I never knew that the User Views feature existed and yet, it's been fairly useful to me. Increasing the discoverability of features would be a plus.
I don't believe in this whole "less is more" thing. Rather than making MyBB simpler, it should abstract the complexity away while dropping the legacy baggage.