MyBB Community Forums

(2009-07-29, 04:47 AM)Ooka Wrote: [ -> ]Um, I agree with most of what you said, although I don't think "childish" is quite the right word for the layout. XD

My rebuttal:



IT HAS A ROCKET ON IT

I've always interpreted it as a missile sent to blow the bad post up, but same concept I suppose, lol.

lol, that's the best response yet Brad.

I think the theme is fine though except maybe the rocket .

(2009-07-29, 04:23 AM)Bey Brad Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:You seriously gonna tell me that 5yrs isnt enough? Come on now. Sorry but there is no reason why the best free forum script doesnt have the #1 spot or heck even #2 in popularity.

HarryWx, you seriously need to chill out. This thread is going in a really productive direction and it's not fair to the people contributing if it gets locked because you couldn't restrain yourself. For you to say, "some of us need to lose the attitudes [before we can begin to work together as a community]" is fairly ironic.

I sincerely do not care whether MyBB is #1 or #2 or #3 or whatever. Realistically, if MyBB was overrun by users the already strained development process would probably crumble under the pressure. Let's take Apple's for example: OS X has what, a 10% or so marketshare? Does that make it a less legitimate product? A less powerful piece of software? No.

The deficiencies in MyBB's plugin and theme libraries are certainly contributing factors to the perceptual "lack of popularity", but marketshare isn't as big of an issue right now as two other things:

1. The perception of MyBB in the eyes of administrators and users.
2. The ability for users of MyBB to accomplish what they need.

The perception of MyBB is a bit of a problem due to its "brand image." MyBB has a bit of a reputation as being a forum software for "noobs" due to several factors. There is a serious lack of successful, professional websites running MyBB, and I sincerely believe showing those off more would help strengthen MyBB's brand -- hence my promotion of the idea of a MyBB "Spotlight." Most of the sites seen with MyBB are either quickly thrown together general, gaming etc. sites made by people with no serious interest, or fly by night operations.

I know this is rather a contentious issue, but is there really any denying that MyBB's default theme is rather childish looking? Not that I have a problem with these, but in comparison to pretty much every large forum software I can think of, it's the odd one out. Most of these forum software have sleek, modern, "Web 2.0" (I hate that phrase) skins and MyBB seems a little left behind. It's why I pushed so hard for MyBB to reconsider their layout and logo for 1.6; alas, it looks like we will not see a change in this department for at least two more years.

As I spoke of before, the "cash-in" attitude of some of the members here trying to monetize MyBB as much as they can without offering a "retail-grade" product is just going to push people away from MyBB even more. As I've stated again and again in the past, I don't have any real issue with the idea of paying for plugins, but it seems to come down to either:

A) 90% of the plugins that occur to me that do exist have to be paid for.
B) Most of the sites charging for themes and plugins are not selling product of higher grade than even moderately professional free additions to MyBB.

There is also of course the same old point of there not being any decent themes and plugins for MyBB. I sincerely wish I had the ability to help MyBB in this regard, and I am trying to help with the Cornerstone project, but for me to learn enough PHP to develop decent plugins would take years of time that I don't honestly have. So I'll continue to commission when I need something, it seems.

It is hard to convince yourself to begin building a site with MyBB when you begin looking for plugins and either cannot find what you need or need to make such a high initial investment that the project becomes unappealing in comparison to other free software, or it begins to look more viable to purchase IPB or VB instead.

I know this was a really long post, but I hope I've been able to shed some insight into the situation. I am not trying to be derogatory towards MyBB. I've spoken to several of the developers here and I hope they understand that I truly do love this project and have no intentions of leaving it. However, the reality of the situation needs to be acknowledged and we all need to ask ourselves what we can do to strengthen MyBB so that it still exists when we need it.

Quote:Most of the people who want plugins and themes are those who can't don't have the knowledge to make them.

Is this not the case with pretty much any service? Mechanics fix cars owned by people who do not know how to fix them. Chefs make food that patrons generally cannot prepare similarly at home. Plugin developers develop for people who do not have the ability to. I commission plugins because I do not possess the capacity to design them myself.

First off. Great post!! ( Need a thumbs up smiley as this is deserving of it ).

Oh and as said all is cool. I believe we are all on the same page. Thus we all wanna help the cause. Sorry if i come off as rude. Hard not to say something either when everything you say is twisted but that is past and i said my piece. All is good.

Back to the discussion.

Like yourself i too wanna try and do my part. Coding well thats gonna take a while. Themes i can improve upon which i am still doing. People ( especially professionals ) want nice sleek sites and at this moment in time it is hard to come by here. I am using gimp though and thus unsure if it is the best thing to be using for this?

But anyways great post Brad! I *think* there is enough around here to help get things going.

Harry, I don't think it's really necessary to quite all of that lol

Sorry i was goe Gratz BB, thank you.

Now can we have a Staff statement?

Great post BB.

(2009-07-29, 06:00 AM)T0m Wrote: [ -> ]Now can we have a Staff statement?

What do you want us to tell you?

I say we halt myBB and start some API documentations first, that way everybody can chip in and make plugins, not just the very few developers who happens to know behind the scenes.

We're not just going to 'halt' 2.0 production...