MyBB Community Forums

To the OP:

I have started forums in 2023.  I will probably be starting more in 2024 as well.  I am learning from someone who is posting in another forum, called BlackHatWorld.com, about how to build and grow online forums.

The thing about forums is they are one of the best resources for specialized communities online.

Interesting conversation here (that other forum): https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/buildi...s.1423146/

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To the following:

Quote:1. MyBB as a product is not developed enough (I don't blame anyone, it's a free product after all).
2. The fact that new and mobile-friendly themes are no longer being produced (I'm technically incompetent and have no taste).
3. Nobody wants to use forums anymore.
4. Lack of features like comment notification, built-in SEO, etc. that should be there nowadays.

1. MyBB is among the first choices I would offer anyone starting a new forum online.  If their project takes off and they want to start paying for additional features and support, then hopefully the project can financially support such a decision.  But with a cost of zero plus time for setup and such MyBB is a tough product to beat.

2. I agree that the lack of current/maintained/updated themes is frustrating.  I took a peek at how to create a theme and found it to be a bit over-complicated.

3. False.  This thread is in a forum.  Obviously people are still using forums.  Heck, people are still using IRC!  Online forums are still a great resource for specialized communities and "modern" alternatives like discord and such cannot quite compete with a lot of the features and capabilities of online forums.

4. Comment notification does not exist in MyBB?  Hrm, what are these then when I try to post?

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Built-in SEO should be further along, agreed.  In fact, SEO of MyBB is quite painful.

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The take-away I always end up at is I am not going to be taking my time in the foreseeable future to write my own forum software and MyBB already offers a great solution.  So until I am willing to contribute to MyBB or start fresh with a new solution, I will use what others have worked hard to provide.  I am looking forward to how forums will continue to grow as more people discover them and realize they can have a new online home.

I apologize for noticing too late the users who posted after me. I decided to send a message again for clarification.

First of all, I was criticized for saying "who doesn't want to use the forums", but we have to admit that the forums are not as popular as they used to be. Someone mentioned that there are people who use IRC. Yes, there are people who use it, but are there still the number of users who used it "in its prime"? Of course not.

I'm trying to help people on the only active support site in Turkey. There hasn't been a single comment for days. The sites that are opened are closed in a few days. Because social media platforms crushed forums.

And we have to admit that MyBB is far behind systems like XenForo. Except for security updates, no additional features have been developed for years.

I love MyBB very much, I use it as much as I can and I provide support to MyBB users in Turkey for free. But I am not blind enough not to see the facts.


Look, I didn't even know about the users who quoted my message because there was no internal notification system.  Unfortunately, E-Mail and Private Message notification is insufficient. (I'm talking about XenForo-style notifications.)

Finally, even in the mybb official forum there are no recent topics and recent posts. To keep track of them I have to either click on the "recent posts" link which, once clicked, never comes up again, or click on the "today's posts" link which lists the posts sent in the last 24 hours. The feature that should be built in is not even on the website.

Be realistic.

I think you make a confusion between two things:
- the community forum is not a showroom of what MyBB could be, it's just a strong and efficient support forum with an alive community
- the strength of MyBB is not all the included features but the hability to include features and the simplicity for developpers to create plugins.

I've created plugins for different CMS, I never found -as a developper- any engine easily flexible as MyBB.
As simple user, I can't really speak, but all depends on what is the intention of the forum you use and what the owner does. The engine doesn't really matter.

I've started forums for the businesses that I am involved with on MyBB, and I have used a LOT of different forum software in my 20+ years of experience as an admin.

I did start new forums on MyBB, but not as recently as 2023, I moved my personal forum that I opened in 2004 here back in 2014, and started another for a family business in 2021.. I will probably start another forum for another business sometime later on after I finish the others.

I can understand the frustration of inactivity, but it just gives me the impression that this software was started by really young people and life got very busy for them as a result.. I have seen this happen with a few other software and forum hosts as well, but I still prefer MyBB, (frustrations and all lol) and I think that they were very wise to go the open source route.

I honestly believe that this is the future, because people are always talking sh-t about how something someone else did sucks, and how they could do better, and MyBB's response to that was "ok, bet.." lol

But seriously, the fact that they have taken this approach means that there will always be improvement somewhere, from someone, and I find this promising, especially since, in my years of lurking this support forum, I have seen many threads from people looking to leave paid software, that we were told years ago, was the only way to have a popular forum, are now coming to MyBB.. I have seen this from former IF and PB admins I knew who went paid, and ultimately moved to MyBB. And as people become more frustrated with social media and its limitations, many have decided to make their own forums free from those limits, and in time, will likely end up on MyBB too for some to the same reasons we did.

But I am not as frustrated with the slow development here because I just use that time to learn more about the software and how it works..

(2024-03-05, 10:57 PM)Crazycat Wrote: [ -> ]I think you make a confusion between two things:
- the community forum is not a showroom of what MyBB could be, it's just a strong and efficient support forum with an alive community
- the strength of MyBB is not all the included features but the hability to include features and the simplicity for developpers to create plugins.

I've created plugins for different CMS, I never found -as a developper- any engine easily flexible as MyBB.
As simple user, I can't really speak, but all depends on what is the intention of the forum you use and what the owner does. The engine doesn't really matter.

There is nothing more natural than the official website being an exhibition app. "I think" the lack of a default recent messages tab makes it very difficult to follow.

And it would be nice to group forums with active MyBB users by country. This would make it easier to access these communities.