I've been stuck in this decision making process for a while. I have one or two good forum ideas I believe. But I've been stuck in the "what forum software" stage for a while.
I used to own and run a IPB forum. I loved it. And I am a user on plenty of vB forums. But it seems that MyBB is the new kid in town and making a lot of waves...and for a lot less of an investment.
One of my ideas was to go with MyBB to start and then possibly "upgrade" later to vB/IPB when things are "successful". But is that even necessary? Some think you have better chances for success if you start with a "paid solution". But a lot on here seem to defy that logic.
I know that MyBB doesn't have EVERYTHING that the others do. And with it being relatively younger of a program, it doesn't have the mod community behind it yet. But it's growing quickly and robustly, right?
So, here's my question to you guys: With pay/free not being an issue, what is it about MyBB that has caused you to love it so much? Why do you like it instead of IPB/vB? Do you see any shortcomings that are soon to be rectified?
My one hangup is a seeming lack of quality themes, even some that I would be willing to drop $20-$30 bucks on.
(2009-02-09, 04:23 PM)StateDOG Wrote: [ -> ]So, here's my question to you guys: With pay/free not being an issue, what is it about MyBB that has caused you to love it so much? Why do you like it instead of IPB/vB? Do you see any shortcomings that are soon to be rectified?
Well, aside from me being on the staff - my reason is: The support here was awesome, and very fast. Not to mention, we're very patient(except from the people who post a question that's been answered a million times because they were too lazy to search). Also, updates are usually released very fast. The plugins might not be big, but the ones that are our are definitely worth checking it. Not to mention, 1.4 is very nice and added a lot of features that make things easier for users and administrators. Aside from those reasons, you get what you get with MyBB, and all for free!
Kind Regards,
TomL
I own a vb and decided against using it. I went with MyBB instead.
The reason? Ease of use. That's the major reason for me. The acp, which is extremely important for even running basic functions, is simplified to the point of being (for lack of a better term) "Idiot Proof". However, having said that, it is not lacking in power in comparison to other softwares.
The MyBB team has done an excellent job of taking a powerful software and adding user and admin friendly features to it.
I've tried smf,ipb,vb,punBB, and AEF. I've converted two of my forums to MyBB just to save myself the troubles of performing different functions in an otherwise complicated and confusing administration panel.
Most people here are avid MyBB supporters and we can only give our opinions based on our personal experience. Why not set up a test forum with MyBB and play around with it. Gather your own opinion on how it compares to others you have used.
We can praise MyBB until the cows come home. But until you test it yourself, it means very little.
Just my 2 cents worth. I hope it helps in your decision.
I love MyBB for its ACP (its the best i have tried so far, and its easy to see why, a search feature for finding settings? yes please ^_^, and you can customize the ACP view to your liking as well
)
Its theme system is awesome, i found it extremely easy to change, and to integrate my site template, and with the support from the community i got it up extremely quickly, and looks professional too
)
The plugins are a godsend, the ease of use for installing is just as easy as 1 2 3, and as a bonus it actually checks if your plugins are out of date or not!
The code behind it is extremely clean (i have compared it to a lot of forum scripts and MyBB is amongst the best) and the community is growing extremely quickly with a lot of support.
and its open source!
, honestly if MyBB was a paid forum script, it would still be a big contender.
I moved from VB as well. I had a 400k forum which imho VB wasn't doing what I wanted. It's bloat. Now I am comfortable writing my own plugins and creating my own themes so maybe that makes me a bit different. I think you need to ask yourself what features you want in a software. VB obviously has the most by far but are those features ones you really need? Do you like the direction of VB as well? It's obvious they are greatly expanding from being a forum software and into the social software aspects. This could be good or it could be bad depending on your perspective.
I often have a dozen or more forum installs. To pay for VB on each would be costly and not effective. To run various software across my sites would also be ineffective. I need a strong solution that allows me to manage many forums easily. Mybb does that for me. Plugins install easily. I don't core file edit. I have upgraded as many as 30 Mybb sites and it took me less than an hour. I think that's amazing. VB was scary as I had to really be extremely careful with any mods and even one forum upgrade took me a long time as I had to babysit the template changes. It just sucked. You often see new VB versions and people that just don't bother updating and that's why.
As you say you can always switch to paid later but I wouldn't personally call it an "upgrade". Mybb does an excellent job and often if you have happy members they don't want you to switch. When I was using phpbb years ago I would always get requests to move to VB. I haven't gotten that suggestion from my Mybb members at all...not even once. That should tell you something. The important things are built into mybb.
Now for the negatives. I had to be negative but I don't want to paint a rosy picture of mybb being perfect. It does have some flaws. Bugs do exist and there seems to be a learning curve at this point. Because of all the features and mybb being a new system people aren't familiar with it. I believe it's intuitive but I can see for others it's not. Mybb support isn't the best in the biz. I believe that's because of the small and overworked team. Questions get answered though and just about every person needing help eventually gets it. Security wise mybb is good at this point. They had a paid audit (at their expense) and security releases are pretty minimal now.
My suggestion is to go with mybb of course and maybe take part of what you would have spent on a VB license and pay for a custom skin. A few good designers have jumped on board lately. The writing is on the wall that mybb is moving up in the world and those that get in early for design and plugins may reap some benefits.
Mybb is snazzy. The direction of the project is strong and clear. They actively develop and have a vision that I agree with. They focus on being a forum software first and work on innovation.
Hope that helps you sir.
Very well stated, Labrocca.
Ultimately the decision is yours and that of your members. Have you asked which way they would want to go?
Do they even know what MyBB has to offer?
Lets go with what Labrocca said for the most part.
Don't look at feature in general look at features you need. Don't go paid just to go paid because paid automatically=better as that's been dis proven a lot with the huge amount of opensource scripts out there.
But, in the end it does come down to your and your forum members. But, mostly you as I won't lie forum members most likely may not really know what their talking about
.
Besides if there is anything you want in MyBB you can create a plugin that will still allow you to update with out any problems.
Just try it and see what you think I mean it shouldn't be hard to switch to others anyway.
Good replies all around. Right now I don't have any members to speak of. Just a head full of ideas.
Of course I want a great piece of software at a great value. At first I wrote off free software (even though years ago I used IPB when it was initially free (and phpbb before that)). I'd gotten used to paying for IPB and seeing vB get all the praise at TAZ....so they seemed the natural choice. But MyBB is getting more and more interesting.
The growing community here is promising. And it's obvious there are people passionate about MyBB. Can you point me towards a few of those "up and coming" designers that might make a theme for me if I do indeed choose MyBB?
And are there forum stats viewable from w/in the ACP showing signups, PM's sent, new topics, new posts, topic views, etc?
Zash over at
http://www.mybbstudios.com
http://www.kdezign.org is another newer site...
Established sites are
http://mybbthemes.8ez.com and
http://www.audentio.com/forums/index.php but not sure if Audentio is still doing mybb work. He might for the right price. He is a good designer. I also do some design but nothing too heavy.
Quote:And are there forum stats viewable from w/in the ACP showing signups, PM's sent, new topics, new posts, topic views, etc?
Yes there are on the main login page of mybb admincp. You get daily stats but I just released a plugin to display monthly totals for threads and posts too. I plan to add to that plugin more stats as I am a stats hound that constantly analyzes everything.
To be honest, MyBB 1.4 has made the biggest splash in the ocean of free forum systems. With 1.6 being actively developed, and 2.0 plans being drawn up too, you probably wouldn't need to upgrade to a paid system. There's no doubt some exciting features will be coming in these releases that will contend with anything in the market.
Because of it's plugin functions, you can do literally anything without having to edit any of the MyBB core files. There's no complicated functions, or classes or registries to deal with.
Labrocca pretty much summed everything up in his posts though...