In the days of the past, it used to be compared to vbulliten 3 (one of the most respected forum software releases of all time). MyBB was once an incredibly popular choice for communities that needed highly customizable, relatively advanced software and that didn't want to go towards paid platforms (and still is). 

It extends far beyond just money. On a free platform such as MyBB, developers work together, and 95% of what gets releases is free. There aren't a lot of unecessary footer attributions for every plugin. There aren't $20 price tags on tiny features. It doesn't have an overall bloated, commercialized feel to it. Free software is great, EVEN if you have the money for paid software. This is a big part of why we've stayed on it over the years. MyBB especially. 

That said, should you use MyBB in 2020? Yes, but with some caveats.

It's very outdated, unfortunately. MyBB 1.8 hit the scene a little bit late, and it lacked one thing that probably put the nail in the coffin for MyBB. It wasn't responsive. 

This means that every single theme developer has to do a complete rip and replace on a lot of MyBB's HTML and templates in order to get mobile friendly themes. There are not many themes that are responsive nowadays, and it's not acceptable to have a non responsive theme in 2020 (MS gets about 36% of its traffic on mobile alone). 

Why use MyBB?  

• If you're even semi-comfortable with HTML, CSS, and PHP, MyBB is a no-brainer. It's extremely easy to extend and customize (which was always its biggest selling point). You can make it feel entirely different than it is. The plugins are very advanced. Much like SMF, you can heavily extend it, but MyBB's plugins tend to be much easier to install and maintain, and are generally more stable. 
  
  
• MyBB 1.8 is also a very well tested, long-stable platform. They've ironed out a lot of issues and have made something that works the exact same way, and has been similar for many years. If you install a plugin or a theme, it's likely to work great for a long time. 
  
  
• It's also very advanced compared to other free softwares. The ability to rate threads, provide reputation, advanced thread subscribing functionality, huge user control panel, and a large number of other built-in features are very advanced compared to other softwares. It's very solid, good software, even outside of the responsiveness! 
  

• Make it responsive. Use one of these themes and modify it a little to suit your tastes. Some of these are absolutely beautiful designs, and can be made to feel unique if you (or someone in your community) can put a little customization into it!
  • MyBB has a large community of developers that are happy to provide theme assistance. If you post a request on the support forum, most will be happy to help you find resources to accomplish what you need. There is also a wealth of paid themes and theme services for great prices. Even though MyBB is free software, investing in a paid theme is a good idea for a large number of communities.
• Install Google SEO plugin. I didn't realize how important this was until very recently. As it turns out, MyBB's built in customizations are made for the best possible server compatibility, and are absolutely terrible for search engine optimization. Google SEO is a fantastic plugin. I put it on here last week (even with our non-standard, nginx based server configuration), and it works like a charm. Google is already picking up pages it had ignored before.  
  
• Install a "thanks" or "like button. Most MyBB communities use these. They're great. We're using a very old MyBB 1.6-based one here at MS, but there are some really good ones available now: 
  • Thank you/like button (Eldenroot's mod. Top rated one)
    
  • MyReactions: Facebook style reactions with emojis). 
    
  • Thanks: The classic thanks button (similar to what we use here)
    
• Install Last Poster Avatar. This puts the last poster's avatar on the forum index and on a number of other places. It modernizes things a little and is overall a high quality plugin. 
  
• Install MyAlerts for modern xenforo-style notifications.
  
• Install Page Manager. This allows you to add new pages to your forum. See this link for more info!
  
• Install Advanced Sidebox. This puts a highly advanced sidebar on pretty much any page of your forum. This is so useful that it should be in core MyBB.
  

• DVZ shoutbox
  
• Prostats (This plugin has been around for a very long time. Adds a lot of very useful statistics to your footer)
  
• MyProfile (Very popular plugin that adds profile comments, latest visitors on profiles, buddy lists, and some other features. )
  
  
• Get some premium plugins (if you so desire): MyBBoost has some very interesting ones (including full style PM conversations and pageless scrolling). Might look into adding some at some point. Mybb-plugins.com has long been a reputable place to go as well for subscriptions, downloads systems, and a number of other plugins.
  

• Post Activity (Guardian)
  
• BAM announcements manager
  
• Multiple Usergroup images on Profile/Postbit
  
• Profile last visitors/counter
  
• Public Ban Reason
  
• Hide Images from Guests (Ported from previous version).
  
• User Status Updates. In development, will be released in May! See the demo installed here.
  

Software optimization is something that they never really teach in plain english. And it's hard to learn outside of computer science courses. 90% of what you will need, you can easily learn without school. But optimization is one of the things that is not easily taught outside of it. 

In computer science, we generally use notation known as Big O(n) (pronounce big O of n) to represent how fast an algorithm is. But when we're calculating the O(n) value, we don't time anything. We don't take any benchmarks. We don't find average values, or anything else. We care about one thing: The worst case scenario. 

You could have an algorithm that is generally lightning fast, but if there exists such a case at all where the algorithm is extremely slow (even if it's a rare case), it's considered a slow algorithm by Big O(n) notation. But why do we do this? 

We use the worst case scenario because software optimization concerns itself with the algorithm's canonical efficiency. We don't care how fast it runs on hardware. We care how many steps it tries to take. 

What's "N"?

N is, in short, the size of your data set, of some sort. It could be the number of bytes that you're trying to compress, or the number of items in a list that you're trying to sort, or the number of pixels in an image. It's the number of items that you have to run your algorithm on. 

What's O(n)? The best way to think about it is to (taking the worst possible scenario) benchmark it at some size N (we'll say 10). Let's suppose your worst possible case runs this algorithm on 10 items in one minute. Benchmark it again at size 20. How much longer did it take? 

In plain english: Let's say we're going to run a product rater on 10 products. It returns a list of a 1-5 star rating generated by some all-knowing algorithm, and tells you, in order, which ones you should buy first. We're gonna benchmark it. Then we're gonna run it again on 20 items, and compare. 

• It ran in the same time. Congratulations, you have an O(1) algorithm. Your algorithm runs in constant time, no matter how many items are in your list. 
  
• It took exactly twice as long (two minutes). Congratulations! You have an efficient algorithm, and it's O(n). This means that if you double your data size, your algorithm ONLY takes twice as long. 
  
• It takes 10 times as long (ten minutes). You have an O(n squared) or worse. You doubled your data size, and your time increases by a power of 2. These algorithms are common. It's often unavoidable, but we try to make algorithms better than this when we can. 
  
• Your algorithm took 3 or 4 minutes, but less than 10. Here, we have something that's in between O(n) and O (n^2). We didn't increase it exponentially, but it took longer than twice as long. These algorithms are usually O(n * log n) algorithms, but not always. These algorithms are very common out in the wild. 
  

Cities Skylines is full of them. Unlike Simcity 4, it rarely crashes to the desktop, and just renders strange things instead. This is the official "show us your oddities" thread! (More coming soon, this will get us started)

Boulders in the highway:


The rare "traffic jam" or CSL's version of it...  


What the hell happened here...


For anything in Simcity or Cities Skylines, if there's something that looks like a glitch or otherwise looks strange, share it here!

A hellban is the idea of causing a user to be the only one who is able to view their posts. It would appear that their posts have been added to a website, but in reality, they are completely hidden to everyone except for them. 

It's very common, as a matter of fact. Instagram does this when they believe that a user has gained fake followers, fake interactions and likes, or otherwise done things that are spam-esque. The worst part is that there is no way to really tell without actually having someone check for you. 

What are your thoughts on this? Would you ever do this, or is it better just to be upfront about it and call it a day?

It used to be that an elementary school could cover a fairly adequate distance radius-wise. Of course, in CSL, it flows through the roads rather than being an SC4-style literal radius, but you could throw it on a major road and be fine. Of course, you usually needed several for larger districts. The 300 student limitation was the limiting factor, however. 

Some time ago, they must have updated this. Now, it barely flows through two blocks. It's annoying for low density neighborhoods where a small neighborhood needs 3-4 elementary schools just to cover it. 

I feel that CSL almost decided the game was too easy, so they updated it to change things. It's overall a weird update. Is this just some sort of glitch, or did anyone else notice this too?

This is my RSS feed app for marketing forums.

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Hello all, 

Due to some unexpected technical difficulties, we experienced some brief downtime this evening. The issues have been resolved, and we've restored the database to a very recent backup from only a few hours prior. Certain alerts and any status updates within the past few hours may be missing, but everything else should be back to normal! This includes all posts, which were fully restored.

If you notice anything else that seems off or otherwise seems missing, please let us know and we will make sure to restore them as much as possible! Otherwise, things should be back to normal.

Thank you, 
-Administration

My state just issued a stay at home order for the entire state. Any non-essential business will be closed, but supposedly, you're not on a full-level lockdown. At least that's what I'm told. I'm a little confused. How is it optional that I'm able to go out, and yet I'm "ordered" to stay at home? 

Apparently that's the key difference between a stay at home and a shelter in place order. Here, we have the same requirements from the government, but it's not a misdemeanor if we go out. In San Fransisco, it's actually going to go on your record. But on that token, so many people are saying so many different things that I just... who knows... 

What are the precautions being taken in your state/region/nationality? What's the difference between these exactly? #askmakestation #poorman'sreddit

Tech Forums News Feed - My RSS app for some of my favorite tech related forums.

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For us, we've only ever needed to use a database backup twice in our history, but you can never be too safe. Even losing a week's worth of content would be disappointing. I used to do monthly backups, but I now do them pretty much twice a week. File backups are usually once every six months (they don't change very much at all). 

How often is pretty much acceptable to do a database backup? Have you ever had to use one before? Curious as to what other site owners and administrators use as their general schedule for these.