Settings

The Settings section will allow you to manage all settings related to your board. The various settings are divided in groups and you need to select the group you would like to manage the settings for. You can also add new settings, add new settings groups and modify existing settings.

Banning

Via the Banning section you can ban users by each of the following criteria:

• IP address
• account
• username
• email address

Custom Profile Fields

The Custom Profile Fields section allows you to define various information fields for your MyBB forum users.

Using this functionality you can edit or delete existing profile fields for the users. For example, you can change the display order in the profile. Make it required field or hide it in the public profile. You should also adjust those when adding a new field.

Smilies

The Smilies section will allow you to add custom smilies to your forum and edit existing ones. Note that you will have to manually upload the smile package under your hosting account in order to use this functionality.

Word Filters

Word Filters will allow you to disallow certain words in posts and replace them with a string of your choice. This way you can easily disable spam, obscene or other words that you do not want on your forum.

MyCode

Via MyCode you can use regular expressions in order to create custom BB code for your forum. You will be able to define your own custom tags that can be used in the forum. Here is an example:

Languages

Via Languages you will be able to edit installed language packages for your forum. You will also find a link to the official MyBB translations.

Post Icons

The Post Icons section is much like the smilies. You will not find any significant differences.

Help documents

Help documents will allow you to manage the Help available for your online forum. Generally with each language pack there are several help documents available by default. You can either edit existing help documents, add new ones or add a whole section where new help documents will be available. They should not necessarily be about the usage of your online forum. Here are some examples:

• You can edit the MyCode help document under the Posting section and add examples how to use the custom MyCode tags you have created for your forum.
• You can create a new section related to the general topic of your forum and add help documents for it.
• The plugins section will allow you to install and activate plugins you have uploaded under your account. Also you can check for new versions using the Plugin Updates tab.
• Via the Attachment Types tab you can define which types of files a user can attach to a post. This is a particularly helpful functionality as you are allowed to define the file extension as well as the MIME type of the files. Thus not allowing users to upload malicious files. Generally the file types defined by default should be enough. Still you can also add new attachment types if needed.
• The Moderator Tools functionality allows you to create custom tools that can be used by your forum moderators. Here is an example how to create a new thread tool:

Spider bots

Spider bots – This section allows you to manage the search engine spiders and bots automatically detected by your forum. You’re also able to see when a particular bot last visited. Here are the possible options you can set:

• Name – the name which you will use to identify the bot
• User Agent String – This is the string you will use in order to match the bot visiting your page. Partial matches are also allowed.
• Language – defines the language pack that the bot will use when viewing your board.
• Theme – defines the theme that the bot will use when viewing your board.
• User Group – defines the group to which the bot will be automatically assigned. It is advisable to leave this set to Guests. You can still define another group however you should be very careful. Each bot that identifies with the user agent string will be assigned to the chosen group and this might lead to spam or security issues.
• The Calendars functionality will allow you to manage existing and create new calendars. Only one calendar will be shown at any time on your forum, still you will have a drop down menu that allows you to jump through all existing calendars.
• The Warning System is another really helpful functionality provided by MyBB. Using it you can define custom warnings that can be applied to your forum users. Respectively warning levels can be defined that would apply specific restrictions to users that have acquired a certain amount of warning points.