MyBB

We’ve already talked about phpBB, which is the oldest and most famous PHP based bulletin board software. It’s been around for two decades now and damn near everyone is using it. That being said, there are many competitors on the market and every single high-quality bulletin board engine is free. The hard part in comparing these kinds of engines is that they’re all exactly the fucking same, but built entirely from the ground up by different people – so they’re nothing alike. You see my problem, right?

Ok, let’s go at this with a fresh perspective and no comparisons, for now. MyBB is a great bulletin board solution built in PHP. It’s a 3MB zip file that you plop onto a web server and let loose with a single click. If you’ve got any web server on your machine, you’re good to go. The same process applies if you’re on a web server on some remote hosting solution. Zip the file, slap it into the public HTML and you’re ready to roll. After you set up your basic credentials, you’ve got yourself a public bulletin board that you’re free to edit and manage to your heart’s content.

Why Bulletin Boards

You know that chronic masturbators love talking about porn. It’s their second favorite activity, after choking the chicken, of course. Have you seen that meme that shows what men are like when they’re discussing porn? You know, there’s an image of dudes in suits sitting around a corporate table looking all fancy. That’s the vibe that every fap-king gets when he’s talking to the bros about his favorite smut piece. That’s also the vibe that you can cash in on if you encourage people to talk to each other about smut on your forum.

You’re just here to set the stage. It’s kind of like running a clubhouse. They’re free to talk about whatever the hell they want to. Oh, sure, your forum can be topical, but every single forum out there has a random thread where people can dump their miscellaneous thoughts that don’t fit the overall purpose of the site. So, in other words, there’s room for any kind of content on every type of forum.

Freedom of Speech is Sexy

The only exception here is the adult section. That’s why I’m glad I cater to porn webmasters. You guys have it easy. Mark your site as adult, make sure Google doesn’t serve it to children and just like that, you can talk about damn near anything you like. Porn spaces have a certain elevated sense of freedom of speech, because everyone who’s there is a pervert by default. It’s not like disgruntled soccer moms are going to roll up on your anal cumshot forum and start sending you takedown requests. I mean… they could; you’re just free to ignore them.

I think that the bottom line that everyone seems to agree on here is that in pornographic spaces, there’s just no room for any censorship. The only rules we have to abide by are those enforced by law and I’m personally fine with that. So, as long as you don’t break any laws, you can be as rude as you want. You can curse, you can share about your depraved fetishes and you can talk about fictional situations that turn you on even if they’re too perverse to be uttered out loud. I know that what goes on the internet stays on the internet, but your average forum is completely anonymous. Hell, even Reddit lets you fly entirely under the radar if you want. As far as anyone on the forum is concerned, you’re just another random nobody who’s just looking to get his rocks off.

That’s the vibe you’re trying to cash in on. Are we clear? Good.

Free, Open, Extensible

Let’s get back to MyBB for a second. This here forum software is an all in one package that’s supposed to set you up with everything you need to run your own forum. However, you won’t find every tool under the sun in the initial zip file. The appeal of MyBB is very similar to that of phpBB, in that, it’s extensible as all hell and it’s popular among open source developers. For the uninitiated in the audience, open-source software is the kind of software that comes unencrypted and unpackaged for you – you get the backend code as it was written by the original creators.

This isn’t common practice with software that’s trying to turn a profit. Greedy programmers don’t want you reverse engineering their work so that you can make your own software that’s bigger, better, with blackjack and hookers. No, they want you to pay for a usable product. Scrap all that nonsense when you’re working with MyBB. You get the original code and then some.

So Many Free Plugins

The appeal of open-source software pulls in tons of developers who want to contribute to the already successful software packages by throwing their own ideas into the mix. For you, this means plugins. There are so many fucking plugins for MyBB, I swear to god. Most of them are sort of built around the concept of single-click deployment. Like, if you want to run a porn gaming forum that looks exactly like every World of Warcraft forum you’ve ever seen, that’s a single package that just sort of gives you the entire site ready to go, on top of the zip file for MyBB. It’s like a WordPress theme.

Then, there are the plugins that are modular and exist to add functionality, instead of replacing the entire damn site. These are fewer, but far more important in my opinion. There’s only so much you can do with site themes. You’re going to have to settle for one eventually and that’s where that conversation ends. But, with modular plugins, you have a ton of cross-compatible options among plugins that add all kinds of functionality to your site.

Take, for example, the MyBB Messenger plugin. I’m seeing it right now on the official site. It’s been around for a few days and it’s already received a couple of updates. It looks good, it runs well and it’s completely free. So, if you want to run a porn forum that also doubles as a social club, you’d probably eventually integrate this here plugin to your site. Installing it is also a breeze. You drop it into your site’s root directly and that’s it.

Easy to Use

Oh, did I mention you have an admin panel inside MyBB that keeps track of outside integrations? That’s right. You don’t have to do hands-on coding. You can operate this thing with the same ease of access that WordPress has been spoiling us with for years. Long gone are the days when we had to code our own websites just to add some custom functionality or spruce up our design. These days, people prefer the drag and drop method. For the most part, that’s what you get with MyBB.

Now, what if you want to go above and beyond and really push this bulletin board to its limits? What if you wanted to mod it manually and change a bunch of the core mechanics for some reason? Well, it would not be a bad idea. In fact, it should be a breeze, provided you know your way around PHP. If you don’t, then finding a freelance developer would be the way to go. You won’t have to look for long; they’re all-over the fucking place. Every single freelancer platform is swarming with PHP developers. So, if you want your own little techie sweating away, making plugins for you, you are more than welcome to hire a professional to dig into the code.

If you’re considering MyBB for your webmaster needs, remember that you’d be far from the first to roll with this setup. Combine that with the fact that this is an open-source solution and you’re looking at a very well-paved road that other people have laid out for you. In other words, there will be no bugs, no surprises and no complications. And, if you hit a snag along the way, there are thousands of active users on the MyBB site who are sure to be able to help you out. The best part is that they do this out of the goodness of their hearts.

It’s a Tough Choice

Make sure to check out the detailed documentation on the official MyBB website, especially if you’ll be integrating the code onto your server yourself. It’s simple, for sure, but you want to know what you’re getting yourself into either way. It’s pretty hard to compare the abilities of this bulletin board solution versus other popular free scripts, but at the very least, I can tell you that MyBB is damn good and you would not regret using it.