Archive for July, 2007

10 Reasons Why One Chose MyBB

Published by DennisTT July 27th, 2007 in MyBB 1.2.x. 5 Comments

labrocca, an active user at the MyBB Community Forums came up with a list of 10 (actually 11) reasons why he chose to convert from vBulletin to MyBB.  Here’s what he posted (slightly edited):

1. vB isn’t free (obvious one I know)
2. vB skinning is difficult and often good skins cost money
3. vB has a bloated system and you can’t remove parts you don’t need
4. vB upgrading is an incredible hassle while MyBB has a near perfect upgrade system
5. MyBB has an excellent plugin system that if used properly requires no core file changes
6. Tikitiki is cool
7. MyBB has been steadily advancing it’s code base for resource efficiency
8. MyBB requirements are less than vB allowing for smaller sites to thrive on cheap hosts
9. AJAX features…yes I know vB has some too but MyBB uses them with efficiency and sensability
10. Quick learning curve and vB is a nightmare to understand. There are dozens of settings in vB that are plain ridiculous
11. Fast easy install…yes you do this normally just once but MyBB makes it really easy

Now in turn I ask you, what made you choose MyBB over another bulletin board software?

Theming contest over next week!

Published by madmikeuk July 25th, 2007 in MyBB Fans and Contests. 1 Comment

As I have pointed out on the Theming contest forum, MyBBFans’ theming competition comes to a close in just seven days, on August 1st. This means themers have just one week to submit or finish their themes. You might want to hurry up if your theme isn’t ready yet. Good luck to everyone involved. It’s going to be a hard time to decide which theme wins.

More 1.4 features!

Published by MiNT July 14th, 2007 in MyBB 1.4.x. 4 Comments

So there I was, idling in the mybb irc channel happily minding my own business developing one of my not so secret, super secret projects when Chris suddenly becomes active and slaps us all in the face by teasing us about more 1.4 features.

<surfichris> new user management is going to be kick ass.

Oh it is, is it surfi? Does this mean I must drop everything and report on everything you’re about to say on mybbfans’ blog? I believe it does!

When asked what sort of changes he was making to the user management. More control for the admins, code revisions and optimisations or just cosmetic changes. He gleefully responded “all the above”! Maybe we will be seeing the sort of control that DennisTT’s Additional User Settings provides by default in mybb. Probably more as he went on to promise something totally unique, unseen in other modern forum packages.

As exciting as the above is, he didn’t stop there. He went on to tell us about some of the advanced search features in 1.4.

I ask you, what do you think of saved searches? Tell me in the comments.

Saved search, where you specify a search in your user cp and when you want to look through the results they are instantly available and up to date. Say for instance you want to keep up to date on the latest speculations on mybb 1.4 in the community forums. Well you would specify a new saved search for “mybb 1.4”. Then when you come back you will have an up to date list of all the threads and posts with “mybb 1.4”, no need to re-enter data into the search page. “So what?” I hear you say. You can go to the search page and re-enter the data to research with very little inconvenience. Its not exactly a revolutionary new feature. Well as the users might be able to use the results as an RSS feed to search your site for the bits they are interested in without even visiting your website, the main advantage is to the admin and not the users. The users would only have access to the threads and posts, as an admin you have access to all the information on your forum, information which is now search-able.

<surfichris> say you wanted had an IP address you wished to track
<surfichris> you could possibly create a view called “All users with 127.0.0.1″ as their IP.

So we can generate reports on our users activity. If all the search functions have been turned into a centralised class, there is practically nothing now which cannot be searched. He also announced that plugins and modifications can use the search features!

<surfichris> and say you wanted to implement this idea of “View” in a modification
<surfichris> you could possibly call it via build_x_view($view_properties)
<surfichris> so that way people could integrate it elsewhere

Wow, exciting stuff. MyBB 1.4 looks set to change the way we administer our forums for ever. Maybe phpbb version 4 will be up to par in a decades time.

- MiNT

1.4 Database Optimisations

Published by MiNT July 13th, 2007 in MyBB 1.4.x. 0 Comments

Tikitiki has released details about some of the back end features relating to the database. Mybb 1.4 will support databases other than the typical MySQL database. If your forum is particularly large then you will be happy to know that features have been implemented to make your forum take the pressure of your ever growing userbase.

Read all about it at tiki’s blog.

Staff Positions Taken!

Published by MiNT July 12th, 2007 in MyBB Community. 0 Comments

Some of the available staff positions have been filled by community members destroyer, DrPoodle, MrDoom and last but not least rh1n0.

Just because some new staff members have been added to the team now doesn’t mean your chance of being a staff member have gone. Remember Dev positions are available too and the above four members are support members, so anyone who applied for a Dev position is in with a good chance. Also Chris has said that positions are still available in his announcement and in the IRC channel.

As to who has already been picked for a position on the dev team, we can only speculate.

Staff Positions Available - UPDATE

Published by Tikitiki July 11th, 2007 in MyBB Community. 0 Comments

Chris on the IRC channel yesterday confirmed to us that no more submissions for staff positions. It’s finally time for the staff members to look over the submissions with a fine tooth comb and come to a decision on their new team mates. There are a great number of fine submissions to wade through and coming to a final decision will be hard. If you are have submitted a statement to the MyBB team regarding this matter then you have a lot of competition to overcome. Although the review was postponed due to a recently discovered exploit, the results will be available soon.

Check back here later for the latest!

MyBB 1.2.9

Published by DennisTT July 10th, 2007 in MyBB 1.2.x. 0 Comments

The MyBB Group has released MyBB 1.2.9 to address two high risk security vulnerabilities.  It is recommended to update to 1.2.9 immediately.

If you haven’t noticed the MyBB Group has also started to provide plugins to patch the security vulnerabilities.  Easy huh?

The latest package, and the most up to date upgrade information can be found on the official MyBB website.

“Multi-Quote Posting, Quick Edit, Easy Profile Editing, Cool Away System, Easy To Use”

Published by DennisTT July 6th, 2007 in MyBB 1.2.x. 0 Comments

Are you wondering what users have to say about MyBB?  shadow82x posted a short review of MyBB on the MyBB Community Forums.

The review emphasizes the ease of use MyBB offers especially for setup and the front end, however, the Admin Control Panel was found to be daunting at first.  Overall shadow82x was impressed with MyBB.

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