I've converted alot of people from phpBB to vBulletin in the last year and as I went through my inventory of templates to suggest one to a friend of mine I realized that I had nearly 15 licenses in my logs for vBulletin with almost as many in my inventory after a recent 5 (lease) license purchase.
I figured this would be a great subject for these forums as I see many people making this very transition in an almost pilgrimage migration to a better life. So I thought to myself, yeah, lets do it! A sort of "Battle of the boards." "vBulletin against the world", well, maybe a little extreme, and a little biased so I think keep it simple and then I can shoot my mouth off in the posts as we see what perspectives we can garner;
vBulletin vs phpBB, tell us why.
I'll start with my exhaustive reasoning to get things rolling.
First! (my pet peve) I've come to learn that phpBB still uses a whole lot of old PHP3 Code and MUCH of the code is the same tired old code its always had. Olympus or what ever the code name had been was a greatly anticipated event that seemed to be expected with longer delay than any product I've ever seen.
My friend compares the phpBB announcements and hype as "The Prophesy" because its so interesting to watch the interaction and cult like following of the would be disciples behaving like rats in a feeder box as they go through all the paces from the latest "Revelation!" I mean stop that, please! I laught when I see that phpBB had a "super cool new" product announced nearly two years ago and is still as elusive as Waldo.
I remember to this day when my pal sent me an email with the opening line, "Jared, have you seen the latest prophesy" I knew in an instant that phpBB had made another resounding second comming type prophesy with a crystal ball mentality. The super secret, highly classified, eyes only new revolutionary design that will make phpBB look so great it will make you take a gasp in breath as you awe at its beauty. Yeah? Right?; and the sky is falling too? Two years later the same ole phpBB.
So when us big kids quit our jobs at the entry level position at McDonalds and move up the corporate ladder we tend to dress a bit better by wearing a real piece of cloth instead of those made from oil and plastic. Nothing could be better compared to the same switch from the infancy of tooth cutting and weaning from nipple of phpBB as we grow up and switch to the more elegant vBulletin. Now although weaning is tuff many times when you are a desciple of a product, you come to realize it has to be done. I've been there having used phpBB for years, and I'm as hard headed as the rest about change having been breast fed until I was 17 (just kidding).
So what are the methods to our madness in terms of preference of one board over the other. We each have an idea, a perspective, a belief, and I'd like to hear a few. Then I'll sound off a bit more on what I've discovered from a professional stand point.
~ Jared
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But for a different group that use a non-vBulletin forum for commercial purposes because it's free, I think their missing an important point.
I've seen enough sources agree that their is a tremendous psychological advantage you gain from using vBulletin if your serious about your forum.
One of the first things that Webmasters/web savey visitors do when they come to your forum is see what forum software your running. If your running vBulletin, you're sending this message, "I believe in my forum enough to pluck down the $100 a year. I think this forum is going places, I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is." This assumption/bias was created over time and, I think, to ingrained to try fighting. Part of the bias comes from the fact that, if you look at the major forums, most are running vBulletin. Look at the Webmaster Forums, for example and click off the big 3: SitePoint, DigitalPoint, and WebmasterWorld: all running vBulletin.
If your running free software, many don't stay long. If you don't believe in your forum enough to buy the accepted industry standard, then how do you expect them to believe in your forum?
Every time you have a non-member visitor come to your forum, it's like a sales pitch in which they size up your forum from it's software, to it's design, the size of it's membership, to it's topics and content. Each one is like a little test of whether they think it's worth it to register or to move on. Why fail the software test if you don't have to? It's hard enough passing the design/topic/content/size tests.
Is this assumption always fair? No, it's not but it is reality so it is worth it to spend the extra on vBulletin for psychological reasons alone. Why fight this bias? There is already so many obstacles in the path to forum success that, why do you need to throw in such a major road block?
However, for forums that are only for fun that I do not plan to make extremely successful, I like to use Simple Machines Forum. I'm not against free forum software, I just think they are not practical for commercial venture forums.
If a purchased license is $165 and you get a years worth of updates and support doesnt it make sense to just spend $85 now and $85 next year and get twice the bang for your buck. $170 over two years seems to me that its like buying an extra year of support, upgrades and access for $5 and very few people can intelligently argue against $5.
For my money, I'm going leased all the way.
~Jared
I got to the point that I simply asked him a question. If phpBB is so damn great then why doesnt every commercial site use it? I mean every single professional and commercial site I'm a member of has vBulletin as its board. There must be a reason, right?
Perception is very important and when I see guys brag about their $5 hosting plans and their sites jam packed with features that have no value like whos online and polls and all the other kiddie toys like shout boxes I just laugh.
You dont brag about how cheap your house is or how cheap your car is, why brag about your cheap hosting plan where you sit on a server with 1000 other sites sharing a community IP number much the same way as sharing a community toilet.
Three months ago in a developers meeting we had discussed the fact that most people find the internet so risk free that it brings out the absolute wierdest people. I mean if it costs you nothing to take a business plunge on a $5 gamble then you are more likely to do it.
True quality and truly valuable perception begins with what you show people and if you show them phpBB you show them free (quality or not) and when you add modules that are so trivial they serve no purpose, you show your customers and visitors your site has no value beyond a shoutbox and scrolling gallery and all the other worthless features people pack that 11 Meg installation of phpBB with.
Makes no sense.
~ Jared
P.S. I'm not condeming those that can't afford commercial or high end hosting, I'm articulating that perception is EVERYTHING and using phpBB doesn't make you bad providing you dont pack it with the trivial little things that make it look cheap. A forum is a forum and should remain so.
j/k - check out http://www.vbulletin.com - have a nice day!
I've been using vBulletin for just about a year now, I've never had any major issues with it at all. We migrated from YaBB (YetAnotherBulletinBoard). I've used phpBB before, but never in a production enviroment, so I can't speak about problems with it.
When I go to a forum where I have not previously registered, I usually check to see whether they are using a free forum software. vB or IPB appeals to me much more than SMF, phpBB, or YaBB does. Forums who use a commercial script seem more professional, and in most cases, more welcoming. From my experience with SMF, phpBB, YaBB, IPB, and vB; IPB and vB can be customized much easier than any other forums. I've never really been to a SMF or phpBB forum that has been almost completely redesigned like many vB forums are.
In short, vB rocks!
Sorry, I had to get that out!
I'm a coder and i stil preffer to use vBulletin even when making modifications to the code, Its maybe not as easy as some other forums but the end result is great
I preffer vBulletin purely because it has more style, more features and you don't get v.2.15 and v.2.16 just because they've added some small bit of security its soo anyoing if they just made a decent secure script they wouldn't have to do that. :banghead:
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I have a friend that was using vB and his board was recently hacked and his db destroyed. He had to rebuild the wholge thing from scratch and re-add all his users. All posts were lost.
The main reason that I like phpbb is that SO many boards use vB. Sure, it has better support and sounds like it is more powerful, but who wants their board to look like every other board on the net? I know...there are skins, and you can chang this and that around, but you can easily tell when a board is vB. The look and feel are all the same, and that is more what I am referring to rather than colors and skins.
I have nothing against vB, and I will probably use it some day, but phpbb seems a little more unique and different right now and I like that better on my boards.
Secondly, Not all vB forums look the same... you can get skins (even make your own) for vB just like phpBB...
And thirdly, so what if you can instantly tell it's vB? I can instantly tell when I get to a phpBB forum just by how awful it is, function and appearance wise. And, I'm far, far, far more likely to hang around if the forum is vB not phpBB.
Also, your friends vB forum getting hacked is the very first such case that I have heard of.
I have seen so many topics in other forums where someone says "my phpBB forum got hax0rd
Every piece of software breaks from time to time, and the developer can't always tell straight away as the bug might not present itself as an all out error.
I mean, come on, Ruby on Rails has just been given a mandatory update because there was an exploitable bug in some older versions.
You don't even have to hack a script to cause data loss as there's a difference between hacking and typing SQL into a query string to cause injection.
If you're going to hack someone's site, you'd do it by hacking the host server rather than trying to inject SQL on every URL until you find a poorly built piece of code.
I don't use vB myself, and probably never will (not counting the use of forums such as this one), but to say vB is insecure or unstable based on one event which should no longer be an issue is a little silly when phpBB isn't exactly a model to other forum systems.
I'd rather use something that's free, but doesn't lose all the features you'd expect from a commercial product.
Simple Machines Forum (SMF) seems to be one forum system I'd actually be interested in using as I know what it's capable of (I know of sites with almost 31,000 members which use a lightly modified version of SMF).
IPB (Invision) has lost much of it's popularity since becoming a completely commercial venture as people liked it as a free forum, but aren't willing to pay for it when better systems exist.
Current project: CMS Object.
Most recent change: Theme support is up and running... So long as I use my theme resource loaders instead of that in the Rails plug-in.
Release date: NEVER!!!
SMF might be free, but the support is unbelievable fantastic, its features far out-weigh vBulletin, even if some modifications have to be applied. Having seen and used the AdminCP in vBulletin, my opinion is that it is absolutely nothing to write home about.
SMF all the way for me, I tolerate vBulletin for specific forum members, interesting posts etc, definately not for usability.
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I don't believe there are more phpbb boards than vB boards. It would make sense that there are since phpbb is free, but I am not talking about some board out there that someone put up with no content/posters on it, I am talking about active boards where activity is actually going on. Most boards that I find when searching Google for a specific subject are vB. And like I said, even though the skins are diff, you can tell it is a vB board.
phpbb doesn't suck, but if you have some moron installing it, then that is hardly phpbb's fault. Like I said, I have run a phpbb board for over 1.5 years and it has never been hacked and never had problems, other than a webhost problem a few times, but again, that isn't phpbb's fault and it would have effected vB also, had I had a vB board at the time.
www.computerforumz.com
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phpBB is actually known for its insecure structure, so I do not recommend this one to you. It's up to you
I'm creating a basic system myself atm, maybe you could try that as well.
- xPureNLx
That very ambitious of you xPure, when you put up your first forum with this software, may we explore the site?
xPure, you are one of those that does programming as good as you do design?
www.computerforumz.com
Thank you Deluxe, of course you can, but don't expect anything that huge soon, please ^^.
I sure hope, I am still practising, but while practising (more like: testing), more and more ideas are running through my head
- xPureNLx