phpBB vs. vBulletin

[stevemaury]

To clarify, Stallyon is referring to VB, not phpbb.

[arod-1]

unfortunately, to this day i was not able to find any serious comparison that relates to performance.

That's because performance is too subjective, whereas a straight list of features is to-the-facts and objective.

i do not agree that performance is "subjective". at least not if you have a watch.
it is true that measuring performance is much more difficult and labor intensive than simply counting features, to the extent that you can find any number of sites comparing different BBS features, and nowhere can performance data be obtained, but it is also true that in some other areas (such as cpu, OS, DB, scripting languages, webservers, and nowadays even web browsers) you actually *can* find benchmarks.

one nice thing is that once people begin using benchmarks in any given area, suddenly all the vendors start making their products faster...

phpbb has some major performance turds that are very slow in getting fixed, and IMO one of the reasons is lack of any performance-centric comparative data available to the public.

even answers to relatively simple and not-too-hard-to-obtain questions such as "how do the different search backends (in phpbb) compare wrt performance" do not exist in the public domain (as far as i know), let alone performance comparison between phpbb and vB or other systems.

peace.

[Dog Cow]

And the reason they don't exist is because they're too hard to get, define, and standardize. Everyone's server setup is different. I might be running MySQL and Apache on one box. You might have a cluster of separate machines all on a private network.

[Stallyon]

To clarify, Stallyon is referring to VB, not phpbb.

Exactly. I have corrected my post to clarify that. Thanks for the pick up!

[arod-1]

And the reason they don't exist is because they're too hard to get, define, and standardize. Everyone's server setup is different. I might be running MySQL and Apache on one box. You might have a cluster of separate machines all on a private network.

i don't know that this argument is productive, but let me at least list what i think.
of course you do not compare one bbs running on one server using one software with another bbs running on a different server with a different software.
but this does not mean that benchmarks are "subjective", it just means they need to be well-defined.

one could use similar objections to the ones you mentioned to argue that different database engines can't be compared, or different CPUs etc.

benchmarks can be created. you just need to define *exactly* what are you going to measure, and then repeat the same measurements for the different systems you want to benchmark: you define server hardware and software, and you use a standardize content, i.e. users, forums, posts etc.
using some converters you port *the same* content to several different systems.
you also create artificial load, by creating "bot users". ask any spammer - it may not be easy, but it's doable.

one by one you install the different BBS systems on the same test setup, and you run a standardize load, i.e. well defined number of scripts doing well defined set of things - reading, writing, searching etc., at exactly the same rate.
running this load you measure how long some standard operations take - opening a forum, browsing, paging, posting, editing, deleting, searching etc.
you also record the load on the host (cpu, memory, DB load, I/O load etc.)
you take pains to do exactly the same thing, with the same content, hardware, software (except the software that is being compared, of course) and load. for each of the BBS system you want to benchmark.

as i just demonstrated, it is very easy to *define*. however, as i mentioned, actually *executing* the benchmark requires hard work, and with little reward.

however, one presumes (or at least hopes) that once this benchmark-framework existed, it would be much easier to repeat the measurements for every new version, and thus detect performance regressions or, to be optimistic, performance improvements achieved from one version to the next.

[noth]

*cough*

That's just the admin panel though, not a demo of the entire board.

I don't even get that far

I just see a sign up page

anyway the $195 cost is PER BOARD as I remember

so you have 2 boards it's $195 x 2

what is the thinking behind paying that when phpBB3 is free? beats me

[Stallyon]

Hey now, if you buy 3 you save $30 tho!

[dontcoz]

*cough*

That's just the admin panel though, not a demo of the entire board.

I don't even get that far

I just see a sign up page

anyway the $195 cost is PER BOARD as I remember

so you have 2 boards it's $195 x 2

what is the thinking behind paying that when phpBB3 is free? beats me

um. you get a full board.

i've checked it out because i thought that it would be nice to not have to mod to get nice seo friendly urls.. but then it just seems so foreign and non-friendly (which is probably a purely emotional reaction) but i don't think VB is for me.. money issue notwithstanding. also, there is that thing about it being closed source - that's so bloody elitist lol sorry but - screw them:))

[/a3]

i've checked it out because i thought that it would be nice to not have to mod to get nice seo friendly urls.. but then it just seems so foreign and non-friendly (which is probably a purely emotional reaction) but i don't think VB is for me.. money issue notwithstanding. also, there is that thing about it being closed source - that's so bloody elitist lol sorry but - screw them:))

Did you realise this topic was from 2010?

[nextgen]

Close this topic because there is no point of comparison

[noth]

there is a point of comparison!

plenty of phpBB admins go onto vBulletin - so the topic is valid

um. you get a full board.

well what do you think you get with phpBB then? an empty board?

you get a full board with phpBB as well!

[dontcoz]

there is a point of comparison!

plenty of phpBB admins go onto vBulletin - so the topic is valid

um. you get a full board.

well what do you think you get with phpBB then? an empty board?

you get a full board with phpBB as well!

lol! and thank god for that:))

[uuiiuu]

i think that vbulletin is a crappy system, but has a lot of important features....
it has a crappy design
it has a crappy interface
its very complicated to understand where is everything in the ACP
it you need a real good design you have to create yourself cause you cant find a normal one online like here

but the features, it has many important features as:
soft delete
quick reply with no refresh
ban into group
wysiwyg editor
and a lot more

i think if you combine phpbb with vb you willget the prefect system

[nextgen]

there is a point of comparison!

plenty of phpBB admins go onto vBulletin - so the topic is valid

Not valid since we are talking about a forum of payment.

[Pony99CA]

there is a point of comparison!

plenty of phpBB admins go onto vBulletin - so the topic is valid

Not valid since we are talking about a forum of payment.

Price is a valid comparison point. This is the phpBB Discussion forum, and comparing phpBB with other boards certainly seems valid to me.

I also don't have a problem with bumping an old topic if something new is being discussed. That seems better to me than starting a new topic, thereby fragmenting discussion about the comparison into multiple topics.

Steve