Mechbunny Link Directory

This review is very near and dear to my heart, much like the rest of the scripts I’ve got in this category. Porn directories are kind of my thing, if you haven’t noticed. My main site is and always has been a porn directory that was originally inspired by The Big List of Porn. At this point, the format’s pretty much become bread and butter. I’ve seen thousands of sites drawing inspiration from their approach, my design and the people that came after me. It’s kind of like a rite of passage among webmasters, when you first decide to host your own porn directory.

Granted, these scripts aren’t for everyone. They won’t do you any good if you want to peddle smut of your own. But, once you decide to get into porn reviews or any similar directory breakdown of content, MechBunny will have you covered. They basically offer you an out of the box package that’s ready to go from day one. Hell, if you make your purchase early in the day, you could be a successful webmaster by that evening. There’s really no reason why getting a porn review site should take very long.

There’s the question of "why". As in, why should you buy a porn script and why go with MechBunny specifically? Well, your only real alternatives to purchasing a porn script are manual labor and adapting a free template. Yes, some free templates will do the job, but for the most part, they run on WordPress and I’m just not a fan of adapting web engines for tasks that they were not designed for. You’re always better off getting an optimized package for the specific niche that you want to be involved in. That’s why I like MechBunny’s simplicity. As for how they differ from their competitors, well, we’ll have to dive into the details.

The Engine

MechBunny’s directory script is built entirely in PHP, using the latest available technology, making it compatible with all the newest PHP integrations that you might want to include in the future. They boast 99% unencoded PHP. For the uninitiated in the audience, that means that the code for the actual script is revealed to you. You can tinker with it. You can fuck it up to high heaven if you want. This is great because it means you can hire a developer to make changes to the damn thing from day one.

There are pros and cons to using PHP, though. First of all, finding a good PHP developer is exponentially harder than finding a JavaScript techie, because PHP is significantly more difficult to use. This is just a simple fact of life. It isn’t my fault. That being said, a robust PHP script is guaranteed to be fast as fuck and secure as hell, so it’s not like you’re downgrading. A lot of really successful sites use PHP. It’s not going to become deprecated.

On top of that, you should remember that you would never hire a developer to change the core engine itself. You already have the damn directory. You’re not going to magically turn it into a porn tube. If you wanted that, you would have bought a porn tube script. Instead, you’d likely have a developer on board to switch up some styles, change a few colors here and there, maybe insert some ad banners. Who knows? You could also work with your analytics and add tracking pixels. The world is your oyster. These kinds of simple changes can be done by anyone who’s got a medium-level understanding of PHP. Hell, half of them are just CSS snippets that you could do yourself. It’s not that hard. Building the site from scratch is challenging and MechBunny has already done that for you. PHP is great when you’re not the one doing the grunt work.

The Design

I’m going to come out and say it – this is probably the main reason why I prioritize MechBunny over alternative directory scripts on this list. It’s not like they’ve gone above and beyond to spruce up their demo site. That’s not the point. I don’t want my directory site to look like it was gussied up for a night on the town. I want it plain, simple and in black and white. That’s exactly what you get with MechBunny.

Now you might be asking yourselves: But PornDude, your site is rife with all kinds of colors and decorations. What gives? Well, here’s the 411. My site looks the way it does because I listened to fappers and webmasters who gave me tips on what they wanted to see. There’s that and also the research I’ve done. I curate my site regularly to make sure it stands out and people like it. I didn’t get there by copy-pasting a ready template that was covered in decorations from day one.

Plus, there’s the added benefit of you being able to load a bunch of links into the damn thing beforehand so you can see the data before you focus on the design. A populated site is much easier to edit than one that has no data in it at all. You don’t know what the damn thing will look like if it’s empty. That’s the whole point. You populate it first, set your shit up, then experiment with stylistic changes to your heart’s content. Given that the code is entirely in your hands, you can make this bad boy look however the fuck you want. And, you don’t have to use a platform for it, since you can change the source style code directly. It’s amazing.

Wordpress Alternatives

Let’s draw some comparisons. A good number of the alternative directories on this list are WordPress templates. Now, I’m not going to shit on them, because obviously there are reasons you might roll with them. I put them there for a fucking reason. That being said, MechBunny takes center stage, because I’d rather not use WordPress if I don’t absolutely have to.

Why? Several reasons. One, WordPress is optimized to run itself and the site within as quickly as possible. But, with a PHP script, there is no engine to load before the site shows up. In other words, your visitors are only loading your site. There’s no lateral engine doing God knows what with the user’s processing power and RAM.

The MechBunny template running in my browser right now is taking up 37MB of RAM and doing literally nothing with my processor. That’s what I want to see. For comparison, the XWP Directory demo is sitting pretty at 44MB with roughly the same performance, which is a negligible difference, but XWP loads pages a lot slower when I click through it. That’s the beauty of having a dedicated PHP site.

The Terms and Conditions

It’s simple enough. You pay 99 euros and get the MechBunny directory script for life with unlimited usage. You can split it across a hundred sites if you want. The only thing you are not allowed to do is resell it for commercial purposes. I guess you also can’t gift it to your friends. That would be kind of shitty. It’s just over a hundred bucks, don’t be cheap. You get so much functionality out of this script. If you’re looking to run a directory, it covers all of your needs from day one. Be respectful and get a license.

There’s a list of dependencies on the site and short of the fact that they misspelled dependencies, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary here. The engine is built for Apache and Nginx, requiring PHP 5.6 at the least, but I’d advise you to roll with PHP7. You’ll also need MySQL, which is a natural fit for any website. You must have a database. There’s also ImageMagick, which I guess they’re using for automated image processing. Again, that’s bread and butter in the industry. ImageMagick is pretty damn powerful.

Hosting Options

They’ve got some discounts for MojoHost on here that they’re promoting as cooperation. They’re not the same company; they just like working together. You get the added benefit of your host being familiar with the script itself, so they’re a natural fit. You can get a proper solution for as little as $50 a month.

They also allow you to use the hosting for as many MechBunny domains as you want, so if you want to run a ridiculous amount of directories at once, have at it. You can cover them all under one subscription. The cheapest tier includes 5TB of traffic, so you can literally get away with only paying $50 for your entire directory operation in the early stages. That’s a deal you can’t turn down.