[Darth-Apple]

Have a question that is specifically for the staff here at Makestation? Feel free to ask it here! (within reason of course)

[Tyler]

How often do each of you spend on the computer a day?

[simlink]

Depends on the day. Sometimes several hours, sometimes barely any. During school the time remains constant, but what I do changes. Lots for research/paper writing.

[Damian B.]

Now that it's summer I usually spend 2-6 hours a day. On school periods around 2 hours a day.

[Nebulous]

Do you have any new ideas you're currently brainstorming?

[Darth-Apple]

Converting away from myBB and adding a better site blog has been the biggest next step I've been looking towards for a while now. Unfortunately, these few months have left me too busy to really code a whole lot right now, so it looks like a summer project if two jobs doesn't keep me too busy. It's an idea I've actually been excited about for a while though. MyBB is probably not where the future of this community is at this point.

If you have any ideas, feel free to let me know. I think the community here needs a little fresh air these days.

[Nebulous]

Converting to what software?

[Guardian]

Converting away from myBB...

WHAT!?!?! I'm curious as to the options too. 

[Darth-Apple]

If I had my way, IPB would be what I'd use. We could theme it nicely and enable lots of cool features for things such as user blogs, image galleries, etc. I think it'd fit very nicely with the purpose of this community as far as sharing projects, ideas, etc. Quite honestly, it's hard to do everything in the forum format.

Unfortunately, the license fee is a bit hefty for me right now. I'm not going to go shower the place with ads to raise the money needed, so I'll just wait a few months when I get my second job and pay for it then if all goes according to the plan.

What do you guys think of the idea? I know we have quite a few MyBB fans here.

[Nebulous]

Do you think ads will be profitable based on current traffic statistics?

[Darth-Apple]

I highly doubt it. We don't get giant amounts of traffic here to really justify the annoyance of adding them.

[Guardian]

I always prefer MyBB over anything else. Then again, the user blogs would be perfect for this place. No good options for MyBB. Too bad spork didn't finish his, and then for 1.8.

[Darth-Apple]

If I had time, I could easily code something for this sort of thing. It's just that lately I haven't had time to really focus on coding these days. When I start writing code, it's all I think about, and it ends up taking precedence over more important things. I realized recently that it was affecting me more than I had expected it to.

Next fall is my semester off if I can manage to get the summer classes I need this upcoming summer. Maybe this fall I'll do some really neat stuff with my free time. 50 hours/week of work with nothing else leaves me some time to play around with a few things.

[Nebulous]

Are you going to add a dark theme?

[Darth-Apple]

I actually almost finished a dark variant of the one here. Time has still been the issue for me. I may look into finishing it if I get some free time in a couple of weeks.

[Urban]

I actually prefer MyBB over every other forum software. I like how simple and flat MyBB is. The only complaint I have about MyBB is the lack of good, free themes. I was lurking the XenForo resource page yesterday and there were a lot of good free themes that I wish had MyBB equivalents.

I can understand your decision though. MyBB has had a lot of bad publicity lately and the popular plugins (MyAlerts 1.8 is one off the top of my mind) still haven't been updated. In my opinion MyBB is the best forum software for small communities. I've had friends who converted from MyBB to IP Board, VB, and XenForo in hopes of rejuvenating their forums but it didn't really make any difference at all. Heavily customized MyBB looks and works the best.

[Darth-Apple]

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

[Urban]

 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.

Strange, people with well established communities seemed to have lost all, or a little, faith in MyBB since 1.8 released.