Another security vulnerability has been patched and released by the MyBB Group named MyBB 1.2.6. As always we recommend that you update your forums (both MyBB 1.2.x and 1.1.x series) with this patch.
Please be reminded that the latest updates can be found on the MyBB official website, and we recommend that you register for the official MyBB mailing list in order to receive news of new updates instantaneously via email.
More chances for free money (that is, if you aren’t MyBB staff or another ineligible party)! MyBB Games has their own “Guess When MyBB 1.4 Will Be Released” contest called The MyBB 1.4 Guessing Game. Who wouldn’t want more chances to win free money? 
But don’t forget we also have our own contest. The prizes here are less than what MyBB Games is offering (mainly because we’re all broke here), but hey, who’s complaining about free money?
MyBB 1.2.5 was released yesterday patching a moderate security vulnerability. It’s one (two if you count the version number change) simple find and replace, so as always we encourage all boards to apply the patch.
More information can be found on the MyBB homepage
MyBB is great. It has all sorts of nifty features that put other Bulletin Boards to shame, and a community of great people (you guys) who are always ready to lend a helping hand when another is in trouble.
Unfortunately there has always been a lack of themes for MyBB, and this is disappointing to say the least. Without a theme, your forum wouldn’t have the individuality that it should have. Instead, it would be one of many forums I have seen that still use the MyBB Default Theme.
Not that there is anything wrong with the default of course, and indeed it is perfect to start your fledgling forum off with. Soon however, your members will increase in number and your forum will start to take a unique shape…and you will need a unique theme to match it.
The lack of themes for MyBB makes this very hard to do, and we at MyBB Fans have decided that enough is enough. More themes MUST be made, and you guys are going to do it for us (because we’re lazy like that). Of course such a monumental task can’t just be thrust on you all like this, it just wouldn’t be fair, and so we have constructed a CONTEST to get you all in a competitive mood!
MyBB 1.2 Theming Contest
You mission (which you have no choice but to accept) is to create a theme for MyBB 1.2 that will be judged by a team of highly trained and intelligent people. The judges will mark your theme according to various criteria, and the community will also get a chance to judge the themes as well.
The top 5 themes will be awarded prizes, which range from $10USD to a whopping $100USD!!! Each winner will also receive a 1 year premium membership at MyBB Fans, and a lifetime @mybbfans.com email address which you can use to send commiserations / taunts / insults to the people who did not win.
If you are new to theming you can still enter (in fact this is encouraged) and you will received bonus points if this is your very first theme.
For more information please see the Contest Page.
-DrPoodle
tmhai at MyBB Games published earlier today an article on 10 simple changes to safeguard your MyBB forum. All of these are simple to do and will increase security. We encourage you to read the article and take heed the ideas presented.
I think making backups is one of the most important things to do (although many of us are indeed too lazy to do so on a regular basis). Having a backup will allow you to revert to a previous state in the event that your forum does get compromised (or if you screw something up). The Auto MySQL backup script that is linked on the article is actually a shell script, and might be a bit complicated to set up for the novice MyBB user. This one at Dagon Design is a PHP script (which most of us here are more familiar with), but of course it would be limited by the PHP execution time and memory limits if your server has any.
Changing the topic now, I thought that a point that wasn’t mentioned that I’d like to bring up is plugins and modifications. Although these third-party modifications may seem nice and have cool features, but the coding behind that may introduce holes or back doors into your system. The most common hole is probably the SQL injection, which can get pretty nasty; these can be caused when user input isn’t escaped properly when executed in the plugin/modified code. Unfortunately there’s no simple way to verify whether or not a plugin/modification is safe, but we recommend that you stick with modifications posted on MyBB Mods which have undergone validation by the administrators there. Just as MyBB should always be kept up to date, you should ensure that your plugins and modifications be updated in order to have any known bugs fixed up.
Good luck securing your forum
That’s right. Once again MyBBFans.com gives you the opportunity to take our hard earned cash! (well, DrPoodle’s money anyway.) We’re trying to find the best themers the community has to offer, and expand the amount of available themes for use by the community. All you will have to do is create a new theme and submit it to MyBB Fans. Further details will be announced as they become known. So start making your themes now and submit them when we let you
Good luck!
- MiNT
Sponsored by DrPoodle.com, Plotting the Moon’s demise since 2007!
Did you ever notice this rather hidden link on the MyBB Fans directory? It’s small but mighty, so small most probably won’t notice it, and will dig right into the general listing of forums right away. Each forum can select multiple categories to place themselves in, as I’m sure you’ve noticed whilst adding your forum, but you might not have realized that you actually view forums based on their categories. Just another great feature in the MyBB Fans Directory! 
Over the years the MyBB Group has placed a lot of emphasis in the quality and usability on the MyBB product and this has definately affected the Internet forum market base. The MyBB Games website has written up great reports in the following areas which MyBB has significantly affected:
As you can see from the reports, MyBB has gained ground both in popularity and even internationally.
It is with great pride that such a great piece of software has come a long way to becoming what it is today, not just as a product, but as a great community builder.
I also ask that you leave your feedback for future improvements to the reports at their corresponding pages.
MyBB, as in your bb. Not our bb as in the developers bb, not your bb as in our bb.
Not our bb, not their bb, not this or that or Bill’s bb.
MyBB, say that a couple of times. It’s yours, do with it what you will.
Oh and by the way, MyBBFans.com lets you post your own blog posts about MyBB on this blog You can do so by clicking “Blog CP” on the welcome bar at the top, and writing a new post. We will assume that all posts are ready to be published unless you indicate in your draft that the post is still “under construction”
PS. Dennis has been nagging me for a while about blogging this. Now that it actually is blogged, Dennis you can call off those hit men now.
MyBB translator tmhai has set up a new service which allows novices to MyBB easily get a forum setup on their website.
Basically, if you trust them you give them your server credentials and they will install a copy of MyBB on the web space. I would recommend this service to any novice who feels intimidated by the installer. Hopefully this will increase the install base of MyBB by some noticeable degree.
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