phpBB vs. vBulletin

Lumpy Burgertushie · Post by **Lumpy Burgertushie** » Sun Jul 01, 2012 8:45 pm

Cpt. Blackbeard wrote:Even as a user I prefer phpBB, never used it as an Admin and have no plans to.

not sure what that means. are you not admin of your own boards? do you not use the admi panel on your own boards?

robert

Cpt. Blackbeard · Post by **Cpt. Blackbeard** » Mon Jul 02, 2012 3:39 am

Lumpy Burgertushie wrote:
Cpt. Blackbeard wrote:Even as a user I prefer phpBB, never used it as an Admin and have no plans to.
not sure what that means. are you not admin of your own boards? do you not use the admi panel on your own boards?

robert

It means I've never used a vbulletin board as an Admin , only as a member, and as a member I dislike using vbulletin, not as user friendly as phpBB is. I am Admin of all my own boards, all phpBB though I have tested several others..

Lumpy Burgertushie · Post by **Lumpy Burgertushie** » Mon Jul 02, 2012 3:49 am

Cpt. Blackbeard wrote:
Lumpy Burgertushie wrote:
Cpt. Blackbeard wrote:Even as a user I prefer phpBB, never used it as an Admin and have no plans to.
not sure what that means. are you not admin of your own boards? do you not use the admi panel on your own boards?

robert
It means I've never used a vbulletin board as an Admin , only as a member, and as a member I dislike using vbulletin, not as user friendly as phpBB is. I am Admin of all my own boards, all phpBB though I have tested several others..

sorry, I thought you meant that you had never been an admin of a phpbb board.

should read a little better.

robert

Cpt. Blackbeard · Post by **Cpt. Blackbeard** » Mon Jul 02, 2012 4:17 am

Lumpy Burgertushie wrote:
Cpt. Blackbeard wrote:
Lumpy Burgertushie wrote:
Cpt. Blackbeard wrote:Even as a user I prefer phpBB, never used it as an Admin and have no plans to.
not sure what that means. are you not admin of your own boards? do you not use the admi panel on your own boards?

robert
It means I've never used a vbulletin board as an Admin , only as a member, and as a member I dislike using vbulletin, not as user friendly as phpBB is. I am Admin of all my own boards, all phpBB though I have tested several others..
sorry, I thought you meant that you had never been an admin of a phpbb board.

should read a little better.

robert

No sweat, I can see how it could sound that way, my fault for trying to be brief.

Malphas · Post by **Malphas** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:18 am

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.

dontcoz · Post by **dontcoz** » Wed Aug 01, 2012 6:19 am

if you say vbulletin is on the decline now, what forum software is expanding in your opinion.

Pony99CA · Post by **Pony99CA** » Wed Aug 01, 2012 8:50 pm

dontcoz wrote:if you say vbulletin is on the decline now, what forum software is expanding in your opinion.

Given that he said that "[vBulletin's] developers jumped ship to found XenForo", I think the inference is clear.

Steve

dontcoz · Post by **dontcoz** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 3:46 am

oh i see:) thanks.

one thing i just wanted to add to the discussion - phpBB might have a topic tag mod by now, but at the time i was looking phpBB didn't have it and it's such a cool feature that vBulletin seems to have as a default.

Lumpy Burgertushie · Post by **Lumpy Burgertushie** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 4:38 am

vb has several features as default that phpbb has available as MODs. that is kinda the whole point of phpbb.
keep the core as basic as possible and let people add the extras that they want but not have to deal with a bloated software.

robert

dontcoz · Post by **dontcoz** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 5:54 am

yup. good point.

Malphas · Post by **Malphas** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 1:18 pm

Pony99CA wrote:
dontcoz wrote:if you say vbulletin is on the decline now, what forum software is expanding in your opinion.
Given that he said that "[vBulletin's] developers jumped ship to found XenForo", I think the inference is clear.

Steve

Indeed. XenForo is definitely the best forum software available right now by a considerable margin, in my opinion.

Pony99CA · Post by **Pony99CA** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 9:39 pm

Malphas wrote:XenForo is definitely the best forum software available right now by a considerable margin, in my opinion.

But, given that XenForo costs $140 (and another $250 if you don't want their copyright line

), what's the best free forum software?

Steve

Lumpy Burgertushie · Post by **Lumpy Burgertushie** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 11:11 pm

haven't checked, but do you get anything with that very expensive xenforo that you do NOT get with or can not add to phpbb in about 5 minutes?

robert

Malphas · Post by **Malphas** » Tue Aug 28, 2012 11:13 am

Well cost has never been an issue for me, as I imagine is the case with other large boards or commercial/professional websites.

To answer your question Robert, 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). If that sounds vague, then more specifically I mean things like better use of Ajax and social integration* for instance.

I'm still not saying XenForo is perfect, it still requires things like editing templates or manual updating, which I think is very poor when compared to software like Wordpress for instance - if phpBB can get that sorted out in the next version, I'd consider switching back again - but it's still the best forum software available as far as I can tell at present. There isn't a great deal of competition though, in fairness - phpBB development has been at a snail's pace for most of a decade, vBulletin has become bloated and potentially dying, MyBB is being rewritten from scratch, etc.

*I know people are going to immediately whine about this and how social integration has no place on a web forum, or that phpBB is meant to be forum software, not Facebook, etc. etc. But it's all just pointless rhetoric when that's the kind of facilities that users expect these days, even if it's just something simple like being to login with their Facebook account, rather than go through a register and email validation process for the millionth time.

Pony99CA · Post by **Pony99CA** » Tue Aug 28, 2012 9:03 pm

Malphas wrote:To answer your question Robert, 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).

Some people prefer form over function. (I know -- you'll say that Xenforo has both.

)

While I know that AJAX is nice and can help speed things up a bit, I don't care that much if I have to take a few extra seconds to register or post. And I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account, so Facebook and Twitter log-ins are meaningless to me (although I certainly understand that it's a big deal to others). (And just for the record, I have no problem with a board adding social integration. The motto of phpBB is "Creating Communities", not "Creating Bulletin Boards", and social can help with that.)

Some people probably think that a 1970 Mustang feels "dated", too.

Steve

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