How was MLP Forums made?

[Prince Lightning Da Cute 619]

So i was in my Web Design class in high school today and i had finished all my work. sooo bored out of my mind i came here as a guest and browsed the forums. ofcourse my teacher saw the word "Pony" before anything else and came running over. he asked me what are you doing? i said looking at ponies, ofcourse i got the "what the heck?" look from everyone in class. but he told them to finish their work and just watched as i browsed the forums in utter amazement. so he finally asked "Who did this? and how?" and all i know is that this is PHP and thats all. We're working in Dreamweaver CS4 and he's been working with it for quite some time, and the fact that even he was amazed showed that this is a highly advanced site (atleast in my eyes). so what program was used? what kind of server? how long did it take to get to its current state? He's probably going to be thinking about it all weekend and i personally myself wanna know aswell.

[Lady Rarity Pony 4,892]

This week on How it's Made:

We'll take a look at how the greatest site in history (aka mlpforums) was made.

 

*plays intro*

 

 

[Sepia-chan 495]

I'm pretty sure it's just a simple IPboard forum.

[FLARE 952]

"It is written in PHP and primarily uses MySQL"

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,526]

I'm pretty sure it's just a simple IPboard forum.

 

I wouldn't say it's a "simple" IP.Board forum - I've made a fair number of modifications to our installation of it.

 

So i was in my Web Design class in high school today and i had finished all my work. sooo bored out of my mind i came here as a guest and browsed the forums. ofcourse my teacher saw the word "Pony" before anything else and came running over. he asked me what are you doing? i said looking at ponies, ofcourse i got the "what the heck?" look from everyone in class. but he told them to finish their work and just watched as i browsed the forums in utter amazement. so he finally asked "Who did this? and how?" and all i know is that this is PHP and thats all. We're working in Dreamweaver CS4 and he's been working with it for quite some time, and the fact that even he was amazed showed that this is a highly advanced site (atleast in my eyes). so what program was used? what kind of server? how long did it take to get to its current state? He's probably going to be thinking about it all weekend and i personally myself wanna know aswell.

 

Thanks for asking!

 

The core software powering MLP Forums is called IP.Board. It's a pricey little piece of kit, but it's absolutely wonderful from a usability standpoint. IP.Board is written in PHP; and as a pre-packaged software package, the entire thing is programmed by IPS. I've installed a number of so-called add-on applications to the core IP.Board software to extend its functionality - some of these applications, like IP.Chat and IP.Gallery, are also written by IPS; and some of them, like the donation tracker and prefixing system, are by third-party developers.

 

However, the design is custom, and made by myself. It's based on the default IP.Board skin (which you can switch to if you go to Change Theme > IP.Board at the bottom-left corner of the screen), but I rewrote some of IPS's CSS and HTML code and added a whole lot of my own to make it something distinctly ours. Grendo drew most of the site's graphics (the signposts on the index, the wooden boards at the tops of pages, the smileys, etc.) and Kurtiss and I worked together on the background, which consists of three separate images.

 

I wrote the CSS code that layers and positions those images to create the "extending sky" you see. Nico later redid the middle section (with the clouds) and created a winter version of the bottom-most image. I've included these three images in the following spoiler, if you're curious to see them - I think they're one of the most interesting aspects of the site's design:

 

 

 

Top section - done by me

 

Middle section - Nico's version, using Grendo's vectors

 

Summer version of bottom section - done by Kurtiss

 

Winter version of bottom section - edited from Kurtiss's original by Nico

 

Though I only created one of the images, I "directed" every one of them to make sure they matched up and would look good when run through my CSS.

 

 

 

All of my HTML and CSS code is handwritten in Notepad++ - I tried Dreamweaver once, and hated it. The best way to learn CSS is to actually write it, and Dreamweaver tries to abstract you from the underlying code with a very cluttered GUI. Moreover, it's faster to just write 3 lines of code to change the colour of a particular element or add a shadow to it than to dig through DW's interface for it. I really don't think first-time web designers should be using it, personally, because I found it much easier and more effective to learn the actual web languages.

 

I spent around 2-3 weeks working on the design, calling to Grendo every time I needed a graphic somewhere (I'm a coder, not an artist). I've since made a few minor changes to the design, but MLP Forums has looked pretty much this way since its launch in October.

 

The server is a high-end Linux VPS from ServInt configured with Apache, PHP, MySQL, and APC. It uses a RAID10 array of six 15,000 RPM hard drives, a 100 Mbps uplink, and has access to 16 Xeon cores. I have root access to the server, meaning I can use its command line, install software, and tweak the system to my heart's content. Additionally, we also use MaxCDN's content delivery network to speed up the loading of the site's numerous images.

 

Hope that answers your questions and your teacher's. Feel free to ask if there's anything else you guys are curious about.

[Vexx3 1,540]

 

I wouldn't say it's a "simple" IP.Board forum - I've made a fair number of modifications to our installation of it.<br><br><br><br>Thanks for asking!<br><br>The core software powering MLP Forums is called <a data-cke-saved-href="http://www.invisionpower.com/products/board/" href="http://www.invisionpower.com/products/board/" class="bbc_url" title="External link" rel="nofollow external">IP.Board</a>. It's a pricey little piece of kit, but it's absolutely wonderful from a usability standpoint. IP.Board is written in PHP; and as a pre-packaged software package, the entire thing is programmed by IPS. I've installed a number of so-called add-on applications to the core IP.Board software to extend its functionality - some of these applications, like IP.Chat and IP.Gallery, are also written by IPS; and some of the, like the donation tracker and prefixing system, are by third-party developers.<br><br>However, the design is custom, and made by myself. It's based on the default IP.Board skin (which you can switch to if you go to <em>Change Theme > IP.Board</em> at the bottom-left corner of the screen), but I rewrote some of IPS's CSS and HTML code and added a whole lot of my own to make it something distinctly ours. Grendo drew most of the site's graphics (the signposts on the index, the wooden boards at the tops of pages, the smileys, etc.) and Kurtiss and I worked together on the background, which consists of three separate images.<br><br>I wrote the CSS code that layers and positions those images to create the "extending sky" you see. Nico later redid the middle section (with the clouds) and created a winter version of the bottom-most image. I've included these three images in the following spoiler, if you're curious to see them - I think they're one of the most interesting aspects of the site's design:<br><br>

<br>Top section - done by me<br><img data-cke-saved-src="http://mlpforums.com/public/style_images/mlp/bg2.jpg" src="../../public/style_images/mlp/bg2.jpg"><br><br>Middle section - Nico's version, using Grendo's vectors<br><img data-cke-saved-src="http://mlpforums.com/public/style_images/mlp/bg3.png" src="../../public/style_images/mlp/bg3.png"><br><br>Summer version of bottom section - done by Kurtiss<br><img data-cke-saved-src="http://mlpforums.com/public/style_images/mlp/bg1.png" src="../../public/style_images/mlp/bg1.png"><br><br>Winter version of bottom section - edited from Kurtiss's original by Nico<br><img data-cke-saved-src="http://mlpforums.com/public/style_images/mlp/bg1-winter.png" src="../../public/style_images/mlp/bg1-winter.png"><br><br>Though I only created one of the images, I "directed" every one of them to make sure they matched up and would look good when run through my CSS.<br>

<br><br>All of my HTML and CSS code is handwritten in <a data-cke-saved-href="http://notepad-plus-plus.org/" href="http://notepad-plus-plus.org/" class="bbc_url" title="External link" rel="nofollow external">Notepad++</a> - I tried Dreamweaver once, and hated it. The best way to learn CSS is to actually write it, and Dreamweaver tries to abstract you from the underlying code with a very cluttered GUI. Moreover, it's faster to just write 3 lines of code to change the colour of a particular element or add a shadow to it than to dig through DW's interface for it. I really don't think first-time web designers should be using it, personally, because I found it much easier and more effective to learn the actual web languages.<br><br>I spent around 2-3 weeks working on the design, calling to Grendo every time I needed a graphic somewhere (I'm a coder, not an artist). I've since made a few minor changes to the design, but MLP Forums has looked pretty much this way since its launch in October.<br><br>The server is a high-end Linux VPS from <a data-cke-saved-href="http://www.servint.net/" href="http://www.servint.net/" class="bbc_url" title="External link" rel="nofollow external">ServInt</a> configured with Apache, PHP, MySQL, and APC. It uses a RAID10 array of six 15,000 RPM hard drives, a 100 Mbps uplink, and has access to 16 Xeon cores. I have root access to the server, meaning I can use its command line, install software, and tweak the system to my heart's content. Additionally, we also use <a data-cke-saved-href="http://www.maxcdn.com/" href="http://www.maxcdn.com/" class="bbc_url" title="External link" rel="nofollow external">MaxCDN</a>'s content delivery network to speed up the loading of the site's numerous images.<br><br>Hope that answers your questions and your teacher's. Feel free to ask if there's anything else you guys are curious about. <img data-cke-saved-src="http://mlpforums.com/public/style_emoticons/mlp/smile.png" src="http://mlpforums.com/public/style_emoticons/mlp/smile.png" class="bbc_emoticon" alt="">

 

 

Wow, thanks for sharing this info. I'm planning on becoming a web designer and/or developer myself so I found this pretty fascinating.

 

I agree with you about Dreamweaver too. I didn't even know what it did until after I had already learned how to code sites with Notepad++.

[Prince Lightning Da Cute 619]

Wow, thanks for sharing this info. I'm planning on becoming a web designer and/or developer myself so I found this pretty fascinating.

 

I agree with you about Dreamweaver too. I didn't even know what it did until after I had already learned how to code sites with Notepad++.

 

My teacher taught how to do Javascript in Notepad before he even mentioned dreamweaver!

[Vexx3 1,540]

My teacher taught how to do Javascript in Notepad before he even mentioned dreamweaver!

 

Notepad++ is best editor in my opinion. My professor in my college Web Design I class actually got annoyed with a student for using Dreamweaver.

[Kapi 215]

Feld0, here's another question.

 

Why IP Board? What made IP.Board such a better choice then phpBB or SMF, etc.?

 

Note: Ok, to wtire it better, why did you choose IPB for MLPForums and Wi U?

[Nah 3,182]

Through the magic of friendship.

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,526]

Feld0, here's another question.

 

Why IP Board? What made IP.Board such a better choice then phpBB or SMF, etc.?

 

Note: Ok, to wtire it better, why did you choose IPB for MLPForums and Wi U?

 

IP.Board is best forum platform.

 

I've worked extensively with phpBB and vBulletin prior to IP.Board, and also tried giving SMF a shot. From all the forum platforms I've tried, IP.Board simply seemed to be the most user-friendly one. The front-end is laid out very sensibly, and features lots of neat Javascript and AJAX effects that the other platforms lack - in a word, it's shiny, pretty, slick, and modern, much like popular "modern" sites like Facebook and Twitter. But even though it's very easy to use, IP.Board also offers plenty of advanced features that most of the other platforms don't, like group private messaging, a sophisticated reporting system, a no-nonsense notification system, an out-of-the-box mobile skin, status updates, profile wall comments, "multiquoting", and lots of other neat - yet genuinely useful - stuff.

 

These features, combined with the good UI layout, make IP.Board fun and easy to use day after day, week after week, month after month - and every fun or useful little feature adds up in the long run and ultimately helps to keep members invested and interested in the forums. An unwieldy user experience is very likely to make a user leave a site, or visit it less, so IP.Board delivers in spades there.

 

But what really did it for me is that IPS's attention to user experience extended into the admin control panel as well, which moderators and I use quite often for various tasks. phpBB's, SMF's, and vBulletin's ACP's all offer a respectable front-end for the users of the site, but their ACP's are lacking and a bore to use - not to mention that they sometimes make relatively simple tasks like reordering forums unnecessarily time-consuming. IP.Board's ACP is beautifully designed and offers hundreds of options and features, yet almost never feels like a slog to use. It also has a few neat extras like a statistics centre, extensive reports on the usage of IP addresses by members, and a live-search feature that will instantly find any option in the ACP without loading a new page.

 

Here are a few screenshots of the deeper parts of IP.Board that regular members normally never see:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't have any other forums set up at the moment to get screenshots of their admin panels from, but here are a few I found lying around:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, I'm tech-literate enough to use any of the software. But at the end of the day, it is still far more pleasant to work with IP.Board's ACP on a day-to-day basis - the colours and design are easy on the eyes, but the functionality on offer is still very robust. And the report system, while it's actually in the front end rather than the ACP, is one of my favourite features - every other forum platform I've used simply sends all the admins and moderators an email when a report is filed. IP.Board logs reports, compiles multiple reports of the same member or content item into a single page, and allows staff to have a threaded discussion about the report to decide what to do with it. See the screenshot below of a recent chat incident:

 

 

Lastly, IP.Board is a paid commercial product, unlike the free open-source boards like phpBB. You might be thinking, why pay for a forum platform when you can get a free one? Well, first, because the people who develop IP.Board work on it as a full-time job, development happens much faster, resulting in a product that gains new features and capabilities much faster than open-source software does, where development is done by hobbyists already employed elsewhere.

 

But second, IPS back IP.Board up with their dedicated support team, which is courteous, qualified, and a pleasure to work with. Good luck getting support privately from the developers themselves with a free board; but with IPS, I simply open a ticket in their client centre when there's a problem or I have a question about the software, and they reply within a few hours. Support is one of IP.Board's best "features", and can really be a lifesaver when something just doesn't work.

 

So, in a nutshell, these are the main reasons I chose IP.Board. It's a pleasant platform from a user's perspective, but it's also designed with site owners and staff in mind - an area I feel most of its competitors are a bit lacking in. It's because it delivers a fantastic experience for both my staff and my members that I feel it's $150 very well spent.

[Kapi 215]

First off, thanks for taking the time to answer my questions! Having ran a forum before, I can easily say I agree with you, IPB is indeed the best. I still have a book about administration IBP 2.0.0 forums, haha. The latest version I've run was 2.3.6, having only previewed 3.0.0 before my support license expired, so its neat to see what goes on behind the scenes and that IP has really improved on a lot of things. I've also used SMF, phpBB, vBulletin, and MyBB. The best free one IMO is MyBB.

 

One other thing I like about IP is that while they're dedicated to making great software, they like having fun. Once I submitted a ticket because I somehow screwed up the header image, not only did they help me, but they called me a "dummy." I couldn't help but laugh, it was true!

 

But anyway, thanks again for taking time to answer my question, I'm glad to see that you care a lot about the experience everyone has!

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,526]

First off, thanks for taking the time to answer my questions! Having ran a forum before, I can easily say I agree with you, IPB is indeed the best. I still have a book about administration IBP 2.0.0 forums, haha. The latest version I've run was 2.3.6, having only previewed 3.0.0 before my support license expired, so its neat to see what goes on behind the scenes and that IP has really improved on a lot of things. I've also used SMF, phpBB, vBulletin, and MyBB. The best free one IMO is MyBB.

 

One other thing I like about IP is that while they're dedicated to making great software, they like having fun. Once I submitted a ticket because I somehow screwed up the header image, not only did they help me, but they called me a "dummy." I couldn't help but laugh, it was true!

 

But anyway, thanks again for taking time to answer my question, I'm glad to see that you care a lot about the experience everyone has!

 

No problem - it's surprisingly rare that people ask about what goes into running the site and the decisions I have to make as an administrator, but I enjoy giving members some insight into my role on the site. Choosing the platform to run the site on is one of the most important decisions to make early on, and I'm very happy that I discovered IP.Board last year. Or I would've probably gone vBulletin - yuck.

 

On the note of forum scripts, I've been hearing a lot about XenForo lately. It's been getting a lot of praise for its user experience, and I've thought of checking it out. But I also keep hearing that it's a very immature piece of software, in that it lacks many features considered standard fare for forum scripts. There are a few really neat features in XF, like notices and a beautiful prefix system. But I feel more comfortable doing business with IPS, who have been in business for over a decade and offer a more mature, robust package.

 

As I said, the end-user experience really matters to me. Beyond the obvious advantages IPB offers in that area, I also do other things to improve the UX on MLP Forums like allowing unlimited attachment uploads and not showing ads to any registered members. I also run the forums on a well-tuned high-end VPS, which keeps our page load times down and generally makes everything better.

 

Definitely have to agree with you that the IPS team likes to have its fun. Check out this bug report that one of their techs wrote up after Nico ran into an issue and asked me to diagnose it with them:

 

http://community.inv...secondary-test/

 

and

 

http://community.inv...ic/352292-test/

 

Edit the first one, which is the secondary test.. Hey, if you want settings that you mark yes to turn off, then I'm doing topic #1 called topic #2.

 

Notice the shared media? you save it.. Blows it to high heaven.

 

Then, edit the second one.. It works fine..

 

If you have a size statement in the editor at all, and shraedmedia tags.. Boom on edit.

 

There's a running joke on IPS's forums that Jason is a robot, as he handles a huge number of their tickets day and night. He's sometimes affectionately referred to as "IP.Robotech". Another one of their staff members, Andrew M., wrote a custom tool to fix an issue with smileys on my Wii U forum that affected almost every single post in the database. And their COO, Lindy, personally listened to some feedback I had regarding IPB's mobile capabilities and answered a few of my questions about them. They're just great people behind the software - and they don't hide the fact that both you and they are real, living human beings.

[Doctor XFizzle 8,669]

When a daddy forum and a mommy forum love each other very much....

[Tom 891]

...

And that's how Pinkie got her cuitie mark!

 

Thanks for the information Peter, may prove helpful to me in years to come if I decide to host some forums.

Also I like to know things, so yet again, thanks.

[Prince Lightning Da Cute 619]

Obviously i'm not the only who knows about Webpages since we got 2 Webmasters on this one thread.

[Kapi 215]

On 2/12/2012 at 3:43 AM, 'Feld0' said:

No problem - it's surprisingly rare that people ask about what goes into running the site and the decisions I have to make as an administrator, but I enjoy giving members some insight into my role on the site. Choosing the platform to run the site on is one of the most important decisions to make early on, and I'm very happy that I discovered IP.Board last year. Or I would've probably gone vBulletin - yuck.

 

Like I said, I used to do website "stuff" a long time ago, the only thing I do now is run my own site, and that's it. I don't think I'll get back into what I was doing, its was a mess, but it worked.

 

I tried Xenforo, its very, very nice. The ACP could use work though, IMO, its not as nice as IP's ever was. The front end is really cool though. You should give ti a try. I think the back story is that the people making it used to work on vB, until Jelsoft was taken over by whoever it is now.

 

On the funny topic, older versions of IPB's help screen had this video in it, where Keith was listening and dancing to NSync's Bye Bye Bye. I don't know if its still there in the newest versions, but it was a funny find.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqqLx-2vUr0

 

 

On 2/12/2012 at 6:11 AM, 'TagTeamCast' said:

Obviously i'm not the only who knows about Webpages since we got 2 Webmasters on this one thread.

 

If I'm one of them, you can change that to former, If I get back into it, it won't be for a long time. I won't ask Feld0 how he does it, since I'd see it as a security issue, but my method was simple, run everything on one server, using different folders for each website, and granting access to those that needed each folder. So the MB admin couldn't do anything to my website, and vice versa. If you're interested in reading my experieences, you can read the spoiler below, its not the whole story, but its good enough.

 

 

 

Basically, back in 2006 I signed up for a message board called the Sonic Stadium (SSMB), its still around today. They had a section called SoniClans (SC), where after you made so many posts, you could join one of 3 clans, it was like a forum within a forum, only your clan members could access the particular clan areas. Eventually, SSMB declared it dead, and tossed the clans away, but two members recreated them on JCINK, a IPB 1.3 host, and everythig was fine for a year.

 

At one point, I brought up the idea to the staff that because the memberbase was virtually the same on both SC and Lava Reef Mesaage Board (LRMB) a forum ran by one of the admins, that LRMB and SC could always merge without affecting much. After the vote, they also decided to jump off JCINK, so I offered a home on my server, at the time, only my site was on there, so it was no big deal to me. I also bought a license for Invision Power Board, and used it for the merged forum. For that, they gave me admin status, but I didn't want it, I got what I wanted, a copy of IPB to play around with! So I masked myself as a normal member, since I never really did much except upgrade the software when needed.

 

For Christmas, I gave either the choice of getting IP.Blog or IP.Gallery, knowing we had some bloggers and some artists. The community ultimately chose IP.Blog, and I installed it the next day. It was a pretty popular thing!

 

Anyway, long story short, my hosting was goign to expire, and somebody else took the forum in. At the same time, they moved from IPB to MyBB, adding more staff to the mix. It was a mess, and all hell broke loose amongst the admins. SoniClans eventually closed in early 2010. If you take a look on Google, you'll still see some remnants, along with the old JCINK board.

 

At one point, I was hosting 4 different Sonic MBs on my one server, that's how hectic it got. So there's a bit of my history.

 

[Feather Spiral 1,892]

A stork cyborg brought the CSS code in its laser beak and dropped it down Peter's laptop's vent.

 

When a daddy forum and a mommy forum love each other very much....