MyBB Community Forums

Just my experience and my 50 cent

A bit of a background. 
I'm not any kind of a programmer, just a random fella having few different hobbies. 
For one of them I decided to make a forum. 
At a time I was using Vbulletin
Then about 3-4 years ago I went over to MyBB
Also made my own minimalistic theme for Wordpress and couple of easy tweaks on it as well. 

So mostly what I'm expecting from any forum or other CMS software, not to dig in a codes, but concentrate on content. 

At a time I went over to MyBB it could be rightfully classified as a poor mans Vbulletin. 
That was back in a days. 
I left it pretty much unattended for a couple of years and decided to give it another go this year

It took me about two weeks just to make my forum usable. 

• Upgrading plugins, or changing variables myself to comply with new MySQLi and new PHP verions
  
• Upgrading MyBB from 1.8.8 to 1.8.24. Not sure what exactly what went for better, but the first thing I had to deal with was "Authorization code mismatch". As announcement says there were millions of security patches, but speaking about GUI I couldn't see any changes. So in my case from 2016 to 2021 no user oriented changes
  

The most important plugins I'm using at the moment 

1. Tapatalk - must have. There are no such a theme+plugin to compare to the ease Tapatalk
   
2. MyBB GoMobile - must have. Very old and no more developed plugin. But the day it stops working I will stop using MyBB. This is plugin + theme. But it's theme is so old and buggy I have to use something else. Nevertheless this plugin allows me to one theme for desktops and another theme for mobiles. In my humble opinion this is how it should. There is no way to stretch unstretchble so it will look good on 4" mobile and 22" monitor. 
   
3. NetPen theme. I modified this responsive theme to be used only as a mobile version. I didn't check every single MyBB theme this is probably one of best out of bad themes over here. 
   
4. Rin Editor - must have. Many thanks to Martec for support. Even I have to use his plugin not as intended. As a file uploader. Unfortunately and as it stands right now, such a basic feature like uploading photos is way too complicated. It should be done just by one click. If not martec I would have to write lengthy tutorials just how to upload photo on my forum. 
   

Also ABP Giphy, Automention , Last Poster Avatar, DVZ Mentions, MyAlerts, Recent Threads, Thank You/Like System, Threads Icons, Top Stats, View Unread Posts

So I've managed to tick at least some boxes and to convert a something called embarrassment into 4 out 10 stars

As it stands MyBB is no worse, but probably better comparing to the likes of  phpBB, SMF. Elkarte is not much different even they very proud of it
I will not be bothered testing IPB, since ridiculous price tag

But....

But comparing to vBulletin 5 mobile suite, Xenforo and Flarum, MyBB looks like a wounded, agonising dinasaur. 

Sorry if I hurt someone's feelings. I'm just honest

Sure both Vbulletin and Xenforo are paid platforms

Myself I would not consider Xenforo using on my own hosting but getting Vbulletin on their own cloud host is quite a tempting option. 
Guys! If you want some money you could easily do same. Provide MyBB as a 100% free stand alone or paid on cloud hosting. Why not? 


Flarum is simply magnificent speaking about free software. The only downside - not an easy to run on shared hosting. 
Everything else is really sleek. 
Mobile-user friendly, content oriented, fast. Sleek extension and very sleek idea using composer. 
Plugins getting verified. Unlike some out of date or underdeveloped plugins we have on MyBB. 

No hard feeling and and still using MyBB for above reasons, but some changes would be a good thing. 

One of them things is "Full Reply".
Why do we even need it?
Unless it has some sentimental or religious value "Full Reply" is as obsolete as CRT Monitor

Thanks

Quote:But comparing to vBulletin 5 mobile suite, Xenforo and Flarum, MyBB looks like a wounded, agonising dinasaur.

This will be solved in core with a new default template. Also, the new template engine is expected to make it easier for designers to create themes.

Quote:One of them things is "Full Reply".
Why do we even need it?

I won't comment on the reason for keeping it, apart from the fact that removing it would require the "quick reply" to be redesigned to include all its features. More than a sentimental or religious value it is a legacy feature or code.

Thank you for your comment and be sure it will be considered accordingly

Thank you for your review, I don't agree with what you said in regards to theme. There are lots of good theme developers with high-quality designs.
I will suggest you follow the 1.9 development thread and also share your feedback for the upcoming MyBB (https://community.mybb.com/thread-215211.html)

I had a look at mybb 1.9 branch and sorry to say it's bad. 
but I will post some screenshots at first
here is where we are and obviously we want to improve it.
[attachment=43691]
BTW this is where I stood with my private WordPress blog theme somewhere in 2014

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this is where we supposed to be. more or less 

BTW Flarum and tapatalk design is somehow very similar
[attachment=43692]

[attachment=43693]

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here is vb5 and xenforo
[attachment=43694]

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here is my own forum
[attachment=43695]
I had to redesign theme templates, also (thanks to martec) to tweak his editor 
Took me a lot of time
One more time I'm not a programmer or web designer. 
I'm shovelling ballast on a railway

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Ok. Let's have a look what mybb1.9 may  throw at me
So Twig will be used and if I'm getting it right at one point templates will be moved from DB into filesystem. .... As good as it sounds, but I'm afraid you may end up with no working plugins whatsoever... at least for some time .

What would it change using Twig?
Is it easier to create more themes? Probably it is. But....
But this wouldn't change a thing since here how very responsive theme will look even on 1.9. Doesn't matter the way it was created. Using a twig or not
[attachment=43696]


Fair enough if I've done it on 1.8 anybody could do the same on 1.9, but there is a but again
you trying to wrap responsive (mega responsive) theme around SCEditor. When did development stopped for that project, probably 2-3 years ago? so why are trying to use it in your future project?

Probably instead of trying to change everything just to see if it works or not, myself I'd rather concentrate on creating MyBB mobile api. If you want to compete you would have to do it anyway.

MyBB 1.9 is focused on the template engine (and thus the default theme), other features are pluses.

Another thing is getting support
For the time being it's a hit and miss
mostly miss

Except of Martec helping me out with his plugin within last week I opened 5 threads regarding just MyBB core.
Somehow none of them solved (unless by myself) and some of them not even replied.
So google, stackoverflow and php library getting your best friends,lol

Not sure if this is what end user of any CMS wants

For now let's compare where I am with VB cloud hosting

At the moment I'm paying to my hosting provider about $100 for a year + free MyBB.

VB Bronze cloud hosting would cost me $180 for a year. bronze hosting provides only their forum support. Can not comment how good or bad it is

VB silver $360 for a year. But there will be ticket + forum support.
Needless to say their cloud hosting will be up to VB spects. So you do no have to worry about php.ini settings, php upgrades compatibility, database compatibility and so on and so on. But this is something you would have to do yourself on your own hosting.

So for the time being if you ready to take all that hustle with code and server related issues MyBB is still quite a tempting option.
Only then,

In my own case I extended my hosting not long time ago and also spend too much time to get MyBB forum working at least somehow.
Plus migrating to any other platform is never easy.

But after another year we'll see how it goes.

You need to take into account that MyBB is an open-source project. Flarum is a bare-bones skeleton structure that relies heavily on the extension community to achieve the same level of functionality as standard forum-based software. Out of the box it lacks a multitude of features and whilst it does feature a nice, clean UI, it's also dependent on composer for installation, extensions and upgrades, and SSH access, limiting it's customer base.

vBulletin, XenForo and IPB are premium software packages that have dedicated and paid staff who's entire job and focus is on upgrades, features, styling, support and development.

MyBB is reliant on volunteers, who between their everyday lives and jobs, work on the project in what little downtime they have. So naturally you won't have rapid feature development, releases, and upgrades. This stuff takes time with an open-source project, so you can't compare MyBB to vBulletin, Xenforo, etc. as it isn't a fair comparison.