I see some talking about Bloat. I've heard that a lot but my forums even with 700 concurrent members and heavily hacked is pretty fast. Yes, I have a dual Xeon dedicated with 2gigs of ram and dual scsi's but I also have two other vbulletin forums running each usually with between 20-75 people on average and a bunch of other sites with small forums.

I think PHPBB and the other free "project" forums appeal to the open source and coding community that doesn't like having to pay for anything. A close friend of mine talks smack about vBulletin all the time and is on the SMF (used to be YabbSe) "team". He is also an old school coder / "hacker" and for the longest time talked smack about my servers running cPanel and me running XP Pro at home. WELL, guess what... He discovered cPanel / WHM and hasn't looked back. He also now runs XP...
After lots of talk we put my hacked up vbulletin 3x system with about 350 concurrent connections (not who's online but active people) against one of his SMF forums with about 75 concurrents. Guess what? I had substantially better load times. His site is also on a similarly spec'd server.

I think it can have an impact on that first impression, but when it comes down to it, forum software is like coke and pepsi. If they like what they see topic wise they are going to register and start posting. Sure there are the die-hard vb fans and phpbb fans, but they're a small minority. Its my opinion that the majority of people who come to forums are going to talk if they want to talk, regardless of which software you are running.

yes because knowing most(KEYWORD BEING MOST) people pay for vbulletin and you see that then its like I have to join to support that they put a lot of money and time in it.

Then again No say you have 2 forums that are different but with the same software if you see a vbulletin with 165 members and a phpbb with 20,000 members you'd mite want to go with the ones with most members

Then again it depends on the look. If people like the looks then they will join

If u ask me I am more of the how many members are there?

Absolutely, You Said It Sista :d

The most impressive forum software I've seen is Active Data Online's Discussion Board .

Its WYSIWYG editor is far superior to that of any other, including vBulletin. There's even an English spell checker!

It is an ASP.NET system and it supports SQL Server, Access, Oracle and MySQL.

I like their WYISWYG but the forums itself, IDK, dont just feel right.

I like their WYISWYG but the forums itself, IDK, dont just feel right.

Most of the WYISWYG editors work poorly in anything but IE, which is intrinsically evil.

There is a new kid on the block, WOWbb. I bought a liscense just to check out the code. And I'm one of those phpBB dudes/hackers that don't pay for anything.
;)

Well I think a poorly designed (from the point of view of usability) forum application would affect whether a community flourishes or not.

On forum software, here's a site that allows people to search through the features of various software.

www.searchforsoftware.info

yea, WowBB been out, but for some reason just aint right. It doesnt matter on a forums style, as long as it performs well. Like with a car, you could have a nice, hooked-up ride, with a piece of sh*t performance rate, haha.

phpbb and Integramod
Well, I would like to draw everyone's attention to Integramod. Everyone is simply dismissing it as a MOD/hack to phpbb. As someone who has used phpbb for over 2 years now I can tell you that the only place that integramod is similar to phpbb is the forums and that is it.

I was always annoyed that you couldn't have subforums within forums. I wanted a free version to stick with the spirit of open source since my website is completely powered by open source and deals with open source topics. I host it at home and don't pay a dime for anything but the domain and DNS. I want to keep it that way as long as I can...but phpbb ticked me off with no subforums...This issue is solved with integramod:

[img]http://linuxportal.sytes.net/snapshot.jpg[/img]


Notice under 'Distro Central' that you can have subforums...You can even have subforums within subforums. This is something They've been promising for quite some time but haven't delivered on at phpbb.com.

What's so great?
So you might be saying...oh, that's nice...but it's full of holes...it's a security nightmare right? The last security flaw noted for integramod was the phpbb board bug that required an upgrade to phpbb 2.0.11 which was out the same day as the phpbb.com fix was. I've never even seen a bug in all of the other robust code from integramod...and it is robust with close to 2000 files for the install and 80 folders/subfolders. If you'd like to give it a try and see what functions it has, I've created a daniweb user to demo my site. Goto http://linuxportal.sytes.net and login with user: daniweb, pword: daniweb. This account will be active for the next 7 days only. Anyone reading this after that time, please pm me here and I will setup a demo for you...or you can just register at the site :cheesy: to check things out.

Some functions
Integramod has a downloads manager that can be used to integrate with sourceforge, it has an entire gallery based on smartor, a knowlegebase function, an acronyms function that will substitute advertising for words throughout your site, a points and ranking system, an events calendar, and a digest/newsletter function, banner manager, news/article function, a post approval system, an attachments management system, and my favorite...a robots.txt manager that detects search bots and logs their IP addresses allowing you to add urls for around 10 different search bots. You can also rebuild your meta tags based on the content on your website by optimising your search function in 2 clicks. I haven't found its equal in open source management systems.


Not a supporter, just a person
Feel free to login with the demo account info provided above and look around. The account once again will go inactive after 7 days (that's a function of the board as well...it's called Pseudocron and is just like linux Cron jobs). I'm not here to say that integramod is perfect...just that it is something very valid for those of us that do this out of the goodness of our heart without monetary gain.


TKS

It looks like phpbb with a few vB features + some other things.

It looks like phpbb with a few vB features + some other things.

I'd say that's pretty close to it...which I find fantastic for open source :)


I also like the fact that it integrates with the phpbb style ACP that I'm used to.

Well, honestly, the subforums is nothing but an additional added on mod, its not a custom thing that Integramod wrote, so really, it has security holes just like every other full modded board. If you would like to, http://www.phpbbhacks.com and search for the term Categories Hierarchy. phpBB 2.2 will have their very own custom written subcategory mod, meaning that it will be integrated into the forums well and be under phpBB's rights to fix any security holes. Its great though, lol.

Just my two rupees...

I have browsed the web and found quite a few forums out there. What I find is that no matter what forum you are running on, if you take the time and effort to customize the themes, the look and feel of your site to make it look unique and not just like www.vbulletin.com or www.phpbb.com , then people will take an interest in your site.

A forum owner must put in the time and effort to make it unique. It hardly matters what the back-end forum software is, in the long run.

Myself, I tend to shy away from IPB powered forums as I personally have had bad experiences with the President of IP, and I don't care to support their product in any way shape or form. But it all really boils down to the community aspect of the community; to this day I still see communities going strong on those old Message Boards that were: Topic - Reply - - Re: Reply :P

1, I am great friends of Charles and Matt of Invision Power Services, IPB .
2, please dont talk about who you like and dislike. Your a moderator, im sure you know this as to be similar to plamming.
3, You all are correct onthe other hand, those softwares are powerful and effective when it comes to any CMS or Portals and greater for the/any web based-community.
4, Dani? I personally think any forum software for a community is good. Dosent matter what it is. Wheather if its your own custom or another persons or companies software.
Im not talking junk or anything to you rixius, it just bothered me when i saw your responce to this thread about how you and Charles or and Matt dont get along well, im just letting you know that they are the dearest friends of mine. No im not gonna tell, cause it dont mattter, thats between you and htem, and it shold stay that way.

Well there was a note saying there may be a phpBB 2.2 BETA-1 release in January/February 2005. Could this be it, IDK, we'll have to wait and see, but with what I have seen, phpBB is stepping up a level in the community. As an added addition, there keeping it free, with features like User Control Panel, and attachments and things, simply such mods as vBulletin and all, this is sure to get them the reputation they need.

I yea, I totally agree with you on that YTech. phpBB is anotehr GREAT Forum Softwre and has came along way. 1 thing for sure as mention time and time, its way cool because everything that IPB and vB has, phpBB has and the part thats kool about it is that its all free. To be honest, there are tons mor skins/templates then IPB and VB has. More hacks, scripts and tons of addons.

Do you think that the forum software that's used makes a difference for a community? Suppose, for example, forum software all has the same options available. And we're talking about the same community of people.

I think its the features of a forum, as well as the community that keep people comming back, and attract new people.

The community is essential to a successful forum.

You say that if they all have the same features -> in this case I wouldn't care at all, as long as the board offered something that I was interested in, either asking or answering.

Occasionally I chance upon a site, and I simply don't like the board, and its usually the lack of features that sends me back to the google to search, so that I can select the next result in the list.

Boards that use VB and phpBB are great, I think I prefer the VB boards.

I use a different board on my site called newbb ( a xoops port of phpbb) its nice and easy to work with, but it isn't a shade on VB.

SE (dave)

Lets not overlook another fine example of forum solutions with the PhpBB-Plus
www.phpbb2.de

I think forum software has a great deal to do with its being usable for the end user. Some forum software is simply slow, ugly, and not inviting.

Jared.

Good question Dani,

For people (guests visiting a forum) that are looking for a long term community, or possibly serious answers, I feel that seeing vBulletin does make a difference.

Why? Simply put, vBulletin isn't free, and those that end up buying a license, or even leasing one are at least show one thing... That they are willing to invest $$ in their community and are less likely to just give up or throw it away.

I know there are other factors and probably no real surveys to back this up, but those that are serious about making something that is going to go the distance are going to spend the money for the best products and have probably also made the long term plans.

Most of the communities that I am active in, or at least have registered for are vBulletin. This doesn't mean that phpBB, SMF or the others are bad. Heck, I have run them myself, though never on a community I am looking at for the long haul.

Just my 2 cents. Not dogging any other software but I do feel vBulletin is the best there is to be had...

David

So you will join an invision board 2.x rather then a 1.x