Is MyBB possibly losing its reputation?

Recently, I've noticed a lot about MyBB, and its once great users migrating to other softwares or have intentions on moving to a new script.

For example, I read a review by the "MyBB Defender" and how he now recommends other free forum scripts, and vBulletin or IPB. I also notice a lot of communities are transfering their communities to other softwares. For example, one I frequent at, moved to vBulletin for these reasons.

Is it possible that MyBB is losing its once great reputation over little things?

 

myBB is great.. but vBulletin, in the eyes of many, has always been and still is better so if possible, people will usually upgrade to that.

Quoting that guy in the thread, "But I will say MyBB is still the best free forum software I have ever seen and I still recommend it to people wanting a free and easy solution."

I think we're just seeing people move on.

 

I agree with Shawn's reasons about the amount of features and mods etc obviously.

I haven't used MyBB in a while so have had no need to use their official forum, but yesterday I went over their check it out, and I don't know what it was, but loads of the people there just seemed rude and not as friendly from when I used to use it. I think that would be a big reason for people changing.

Maybe it was just my imagination though... I don't know :p

 

Perhaps, Jon- maybe some are just moving on, but like StaticAge, and Shawn mentioned, the staff at the community forums are rude. Many of them are ban happy. They love issuing infractions and banning people. Just another reason why I don't use the community forums for support. I'd rather post at administrator-friendly forums, or talk with a former MyBB staff member I know.

 

I'll admit I don't have a long history of experience with MyBB, I've gotten good help before at their forums. But there are a few punks there as there is at nearly any online community. But many people see the free forums (MyBB, SMF, phpBB) as a starting place for a project, but if/when the forum becomes "successful" they move up to vB or IPB. I think that's what Shawn has done. He didn't move from MyBB to phpBB or SMF or another free option.

So to me, that's almost expected. I recently started a forum on MyBB. If it were to be successful in terms of gaining lots of traction and growth, I'll strongly consider IPB/vB for what I'd deem an upgrade in software. But as it is, I've no problems with MyBB compared to what I've invested in it (a few bucks for access to lots of 3rd party mods).

 

And may I add, StateDOG, the new forum's looking great!

Like you know, Shawn did make his public statement at another forum we frequent at... However, you make a great point; once forums blow up, many decide to move to a paid forum software. For one, I have plans to move to vBulletin as well.

Thanks for all of the comments!

 

I frequent their forums a lot and it seems to me a lot of you are not really checking out the forums thoroughly.

Anywho, MyBB's community forum is a lot nicer than vB's, but who am I to talk, vB is a paid forum software and they have the right to bash and ban who ever they want...no?

Anywho, I find that MyBB is not popular enough as it should be just 'because' the lack of plugins and 'good themes' which theme wise, I don't have any problems. Either way, I would admit I want a vB, but I mainly would like to have it so I can play around with it- theme wise.

Other than that, MyBB is great, plus the people who get banned in there really do look for it... I mean, Ghazal.... Yeah... says it all.

 

MyBB is... really hard to handle a large community with, compared to SMF/vBulletin and even phpBB in some ways. I hope they change this but ultimately until they fix it you are probably going to see people jumping ship from MyBB like this.

 

What about MyBB do you think makes it hard to handle a large community? And what about the other software alleviates that difficulty you find in MyBB?

 

phpBB and MyBB in particular often requires two or three clicks for an action that SMF only requires one or less for - particularly searching for duplicate users, pruning, usergroup changes and forum permission profiles. User control is also tied in with profile management - so you use the same controls your member does when you e.g. alter a profile. This makes explaining things a lot easier, and has become a frequently used 'hidden benefit'.

Some people will say that finding an individual option in MyBB is easier - at least prior to SMF 2.0's search function, and it mimics the phpBB/vB style which is of course more intuitive to admins who are used to those forums.

But once you find an option, you don't need it again. You change it once, and it's over with.

When it comes to mass management of members or users, however, that's when doing things with one click or less becomes very attractive. Making a forum is something I'm going to have to do fairly often, and managing users and their permissions even more so. SMF has forum permission profiles. No one else does. SMF has single-click moderation and user management. vBulletin out of the list is the only one that does - and even that is clunky in comparison to SMF.

"You can mod/script your way around that!" is just a sad attempt to sugar-coat your defeat.

SMF's theme system has many flaws. It sucks. I will not defend where it lacks.

Likewise, MyBB's admin panel is absolutely horrible. It's only possible defense is a desire to emulate vBulletin or phpBB, and even then, it failed to improve upon either.

If MyBB wants to be a serious competitor in the large forum arena, it will need to address this, or more frustrated admins will simply stop using it as their forum grows, just as they currently do for phpBB.

Yes, of course more skilled admins will cope in their own way. Some help contribute to MyBB, others simply put together their own scripts - whatever. The question is will MyBB's devs turn up their noses at the needs of large forums the way so many developers do about various features?

 

I find MyBB's support forum staff rude or unnecessarily mean-toned, and there is a huge lack of plugins available, let alone quality ones. I do like MyBB's theming, though. It looks awesome when done even semi-right, something that I loathe phpBB for.

But as mentioned multiple times, moving from a free script to a paid license script is not very good grounds to base this statement off of. If given the choice, I'm sure most of us here would go for vB or IPB once our forums grew large enough. That's not to say that I don't think MyBB can handle large forums, it's just that the paid solutions offer a lot more, especially in the customization area.

I wouldn't recommend sending anybody over to MyBBoard.net for support, though, no matter how good the software is. I find that place to be worse than hell in terms of friendly, helpful support. I always get the feeling that the devs care more about features/default options that they want, than want the community wants. A three-page thread asking about why the stupid AJAX login is default was defeated by some stuck-up admin stating that they have no problem with it.

THAT, IMHO, will kill a script single-handed.

 

Definitely agree with that.

 

I wouldn't necessarily go as far as saying that MyBB is losing its reputation, but there are certain aspects that are causing administrators and/or developers alike to consider the use of competing or commercial-grade scripts.

There is a member of the development team (in particular) that comes to mind when thinking of the term 'rude', and while I won't state his name, I think many of you are familiar with the individual that I'm referring to. He may feel as if he's coming across as helpful and/or beneficial to the project as a whole, but in reality, the statements and remarks made come across as bitterly sarcastic and unnecessarily strong. Whether or not this has an effect on MyBB's reputation is unclear, but it's destined to scare potential users away.

MyBB (in itself) is still a strong script, and it's proven to be an excellent free alternative to vBulletin. The only real problem is the attitude of the developer mentioned above. If you're reading this, take a hint.

 

What gives you the impression that the MyBB staff love issuing warnings and banning people? Warning information isn't public, so how would you know how often people are warned? Besides, every warning given is given for a reason. I'm sure, being forum administrators, everyone here should understand the concept of following through with the forum rules that have been set.

I'm not sure I understand what's wrong with this - how else would you manage a user's information?

Personally, I've found that finding settings in phpBB3 and SMF are quite difficult, because they seem to be spread out throughout the Admin CP, making it quite difficult to find them.

I find myself changing settings on several occasions to better suit how the forum is operating. Having them all in a nice, centralized location (with a setting search) makes finding the setting I'm looking for a breeze.

Mass management of users is indeed something that MyBB needs. If you don't mind me asking, though, what kind of mass user actions do you think MyBB needs?

Could you please explain what forum permission profiles are and how they are different than using user groups for forum permissions?

MyBB's forum permissions are built on a system of inheritance, where for most forums you won't ever need to set any permissions, as they'll simply be inherited from the group default or the parent forum. This is how the permissions at RCTgo are set up - most forums simply inherit from the default.

I can say that forum permissions are being simplified for MyBB 1.6 and that the forum permissions "matrix" is gone. It is replaced with a system that should make forum permissions much more straightforward.

Also, I believe you have mentioned previously that your forum is not quite a "typical" discussion forum. If I'm not mistaken, you have said that it has been built around SMF's feature set, thus making it difficult to see yourself using any other software for that forum. In this case, other forum softwares may not work as well as SMF for your forum, but that doesn't mean they're bad softwares or that they don't work, period.

Could you please elaborate on what you mean by "single-click moderation and user management"?

What makes it horrible? Any specific examples? Also, I'm wondering if you've ever used MyBB 1.4's Admin CP, or if you've only used the one in previous versions.

 

Sorry but I've seen MyBB's, IPB's, vB's, phpBB's and SMF's ACP's, all the latest versions, and even though I really like vB, I find MyBB's admin pannel better than a lof otheose, actually, better than the ones I mentioned.

 

Moved to "MyBB".

 

I'm struggling to understand why one would make the assumption (or observation) that MyBB is "losing its reputation". The software itself is still as strong as ever - not to mention, additional members who are all proficient knowledge-wise were recently brought on to the team to provide an even superior level of support and/or assistance.

I may not care for the "public" attitude of a single developer, but I wouldn't blatantly state that the project is taking a turn for the worst - that's certainly not the case.

... but that's my view on this topic.

 

And not to mention that warnings are not handed out in public nor you will know about it unless you're the person being warned.

I've just read that some people that are from the 'mentor' team are spreading things that are not true. Either way, I really think that it's just rumors, well for the most part. The forum there can be some rude people... and I mean RUDE. u_u

 

How can it take less than one click? :speechless:

 

It reads your mind!