definitely, and another thing
Malphas wrote: To those of us running large boards and websites, the amount vBulletin costs is pretty much a non-issue, I can see why it'd obviously be a consideration for small communities though. But yeah, my point is I don't think the fact phpBB is free (as in beer) is a crucial factor in itself for medium to large forums, but maybe I'm wrong. In any case vBulletin is on the decline now, so I wouldn't advise anyone to take it up (admittedly this thread was started two years ago), not least because their developers jumped ship to found XenForo.
so vBulletin is definitely on the decline now, but why?
for the answer defined in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XenForo we see in the 2nd paragraph on the XenForo page:
One of the developers of XenForo, Kier Darby originally served as a lead developer for the community platform vBulletin. The original owner of the software, Jelsoft, was acquired by the American new media company Internet Brands in 2007. Disagreements between the lead developers and the new management over matters involving the next big release of vBulletin, version 4.0 (including a rejection of their desire to make 4.0 a complete rewrite of the platform as opposed to Internet Brands preferring the use of agile development) led most of the original vBulletin developers to step down from employment at Internet Brands in 2009.[3][4]
so this answer leads to the next question.......
Q the next big release of vBulletin, version 4.0? is it out yet? if so what is so marvellous about the vBulletin, version 4.0 as opposed to the stick in the mud paltry vBulletin, version 3.0??
Legal Action has spurred curious allegations including that XenForo was re-factored from vBulletin code - well would you believe it? XenForo was re-factored from vBulletin ? NO WAY!!
One day before the originally scheduled release for the first public beta of XenForo in October 2010, Internet Brands announced that it would file a lawsuit against the XenForo team in the United Kingdom claiming; copyright infringement of property acquired by Internet Brands, that code in XenForo was re-factored from vBulletin code (despite XenForo's claim that the system was built from the ground up using an object-oriented framework and the fact that a public release had not even been made yet, and thus IB could not possibly have had a look at the XenForo code),
the entire Wikipedia page on XenForo is basically the fall out of and the litigation against the split vBulletin coders plus a table of version numbers, take a look!
Malphas wrote:Indeed. XenForo is definitely the best forum software available right now by a considerable margin, in my opinion.
And the reason to be sure is that .....
Malphas wrote: it's not a case of any particular feature in XenForo that makes it superior to phpBB + MODs in my view, it's more the fact that it doesn't feel dated the way phpBB does, it feels slick and modern and comparable to a modern Web 2.0 website like Facebook/Youtube/Twitter/Tumblr/etc., whilst phpBB - even heavily modded - still feels like something out of the early 2000's to me (and from what I hear from my users).
so where does all this leave vBulletin? who is left at vBulletin who didn't split with the lead coders to do XenForo? have they just been treading water since or has a fabulous vBulletin, version 4.0 hit town that I am simply oblivious to?
Maybe it's time for a new thread......
Not phpBB vs vBulletin, no way that is old hat and past tense!
..... but surely phpBB vs XenForo