Back around 10 years ago, MyBB was probably the most common free forum software that was used for new forums, and I believe the main reason was the multitude of high quality plugins that were available, mostly for free (but some very good ones on a paid basis) that made MyBB forums a really great free option.

 

Having recently looked into MyBB a little, I was astonished at how few plugins were available for the latest versions, how poorly supported they were compared to how they were 10 years ago, and just generally how the overall quality or usefulness of the plugins has reduced.

 

What are your thoughts about this if you've used MyBB recently or in the past?

Complete lack of surprise.

 

The platform itself is in development hell - 10 years is a long time, and there’s been limited significant movement in the core meaning plug-in devs will have moved on. We saw exactly the same thing in SMF - a good many of the plug-in authors and theme makers that were around in 2012-14 have moved on, maybe because they’re not running forums, maybe they changed software, but we know from asking the SMF folks that a significant number moved on assuming SMF wasn’t moving forward.

 

SMF got a significant release out - MyBB getting 1.9 out would revitalise that, to a point. But only to a point - like it’s stablemate it’s not doing a fat lot to attract the next generation of plug-in devs to the party.