February 24th, 2015 at 6:42 AM
The plugin scene has really deteriorated. I was writing a full CMS for MyBB 1.8 and got most of the ACP stuff done after about 5,000 lines, but to be honest, that too is something I just haven't had time to finish. Many developers seem to be in the same boat, both for themes and for plugins. As for us, we're using our own exclusive theme, so the theme situation doesn't really affect us. I tried some premium themes a while back and they didn't really serve us well. I'm super picky about design related details, so I figured I'd just go my own way entirely.
As for xenforo, I really don't care for it personally. Every forum that uses it looks almost exactly the same it seems, and the administrators that use it are too worried about technical details than about building communities that people actually want to visit. (I know, I know, huge generalization
) It's actually quite nice as software, but I don't see it really working for everyone. But hey, I'm of the belief that the forum software matters less than the approach towards building a strong community atmosphere when it comes to successful communities.
The decision to move away from MyBB isn't really final for us. It really is up to the community, but I think that IPB will provide less work to get to where we want to be. I'm not motivated to continue to develop for MyBB, and developing for a platform that would have a better future may be a little more motivating for me. With the same amount of effort spent on IPB customization that has been spent on MyBB customization here, we could have quite the platform here. With MyBB 1.6, I didn't mind doing lots of work to bring the community to where it needed to be, but honestly, I just don't see MyBB 1.8 having much of a future at this rate. Just my personal opinion, many will still disagree with me on that point.
Oh, and welcome back to the community
As for xenforo, I really don't care for it personally. Every forum that uses it looks almost exactly the same it seems, and the administrators that use it are too worried about technical details than about building communities that people actually want to visit. (I know, I know, huge generalization
) It's actually quite nice as software, but I don't see it really working for everyone. But hey, I'm of the belief that the forum software matters less than the approach towards building a strong community atmosphere when it comes to successful communities. The decision to move away from MyBB isn't really final for us. It really is up to the community, but I think that IPB will provide less work to get to where we want to be. I'm not motivated to continue to develop for MyBB, and developing for a platform that would have a better future may be a little more motivating for me. With the same amount of effort spent on IPB customization that has been spent on MyBB customization here, we could have quite the platform here. With MyBB 1.6, I didn't mind doing lots of work to bring the community to where it needed to be, but honestly, I just don't see MyBB 1.8 having much of a future at this rate. Just my personal opinion, many will still disagree with me on that point.
Oh, and welcome back to the community
