I didn't say immune. It's childish to use profanity to trash a piece of software in general.

"Got dropped?" Do you mean hacked? If so then you should try to ask the administrators to contact vBulletin devs to get the problem fixed. Of course every script is insecure at some point but as a general rule free boards which are developed by unpaid unprofessional (i.e., no professional training) developers are bound to have more problems.

XMB is terrible! The worst thing about it is all the infighting amongst the development team. I ran it for about a year, then switched to phpBB.

PhpBB is nice and cosmetically I like the look - but once I hit 25,000 members and around 100,000 posts the board starting timing out and having major problems - posts disapearing etc. ie as soon as the db got over about 50Mb it ++++s itself.

I now have to have auto prune running to kill dead threads over 90 days. Im still running phpBB and am still a fan, but if I had to start again i would indeed use VBulletin.

I run VBulletin on several other sites and the performance is noticable better and much more stable at higher levels of traffic - and this is on identical boxes.

The number of hacks for VBulletin and the size of the developer community makes it well worth spending the $$$ - but only if you are running a serious site.

Id still recommend people start off on one of the free boards, get their feet wet so to speak - and then Upgrade to Vbulletin when performance requires it.

Just my 2 cents.

i didnt use profanity to trash the board all i said is dont ++++ the wrong people off and it wont matter and when i say dropped i dont mean dropped. hacked in my opinion of the word would mean downing the boards or effecting its performance when i say dropped i mean completely gone as in the sql info was retrieved from the script and the sql db totally wiped out which technically is getting "hacked" but i prefer to use "dropped" to better specify what actually happened.

to me....

this all sounds like..

umm...

This all sounds like high-end Corporate Propaganda, that umm... only a group of people who have alot of money would support.. I think you are all, uhh, really under-estimating the Open Source... community, and think that just because a group of developers aren't being paid for something, that they're not going to care about the quality of their work.

But umm, yeah, Invision is up there with VBulletin, but unfortuantenly lacks a few of the key components that make VB the best forum software out there.

I'm not sure about the quality of the code out there, VB3's design doesn't look too good right now, and it all just seems sort of cluttered.

But yeah, If invision were a commercial board, I would take VBulletin over it. if I were to ever run out of money, I would either ask someone to buy me VBulletin, or else I would go with Invision.

Those are my 2 cents. Please don't flame me.

:D lol

vb is the best ;)

Mike, I respect your optioins but I fell I sould calrify a few things.

Of course we respect the open source community, I for one am I big fan, however. The dev's of vBulletin are paid for their work and that insures us support and stable code, I for one have never seen a team of dev's fix bugs as quickly as the vB team do.

As for vB 3's design, it is a beta, this has been stated many times. vB 3 will get a new, better looking design before the finals are out.

Personally ive had the chance to use the vB 3 mod cp (not admin cp, Im not a beta tester) at vBulletintemplates.com, and I must say from what ive seen the vB 3 cp will be one of the best so far in the world of forum scripts. I wont go into details because im sure the dev's wouldent like that so you all are just going to have to wait ;).

Here is all I have to say;

You get what you pay for. You want more, you pay more. You want less, you pay less (or nothing).

The answer is simple. There is no compelling reason to choose VB over Invision board. VB is better at something, Invision at others. Neither has a clear feature advantage. Thats a straight comparision ov VB2 to IBF1.1.2

The outcome is similar when you compare VB3 to IBF1.2

The one thing to consider, especially since you're on this site, is which has the greater user base and thus the greater experience in modifying the code. VB wins that one hands down.

So, are you going to run out-of-the-box or are you going to customize. For $160 investment into programming help for IBF you still won't come close to the code mods available to VB.

I?m a current IPB user and am considering switching to vB but?

From my experience at the IPB forums this is completely and utterly untrue. The reason I have considered switching is because I heard it has better features. But I haven?t found that to be true yet :(

Not true ? 1.2 even allows you to make large images automatically appear as thumbnails

http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showforum=73

There are some very successful phpBB and IPB boards (such as neowin.net). People won?t flock to your site because you?re using a slightly better script. People flock because of community - and in my opinion there is no such thing as instant community, so I don?t really like the vB slogan.

It is very true that there are some ?fly by night? users of phpBB and IPB.

Hmm? I?ve found IPB to be faster but I will check that out, haven?t been to the phpbb website in a while.

Such as? I agree there are some things missing. The main three are threaded view, collapsible categories (not sure what they are called, but that?s what they look like), and Similar Threads. The only one of interest to me is collapsible categories (similar threads seems to bring up either irrelevant threads or old dead threads), and it isn?t worth an entire vB license just for that.

Agreed.

Semi-true. For $160 you are buying access to a few more hacks. But IBPlanet.com is more active then you think.

Please do not characterize all freeboard users as cheapskates or poor people. Not only is it incorrect, it is rude. I could afford vB, and I?m looking into it, but so far it seems my money is best spent elsewhere.

I like all of the features in 1.2 of Invision, and thought ?maybe it?s time to see what vB is doing?. It seems the features are comparable, and in my opinion, IPB is much better in some areas (such as search engine friendliness and topic ?multi-moderation?). There just isn?t a compelling reason to buy vB for me.

Heck we use both. Invision has some features vB doesn't and the reverse is true. Agreeing with CharlieS here, the major drawback on invision is lack of collapsible catagories, but l think this is a vBulletin hack and not a standard feature. Haven't looked that closely at vB 3, so maybe a new feature or something. One of our guys is completely in love with vB 3, while another one wont move from invision and is actually counting down the days to 1.2.

We are still looking at whether invision is indeed faster. Results so far indicate that people using dial up get a real speed advantage, but no noticable difference with ADSL :dunno: Once again l'm being told vB3 really ups the speed.

vBulletin is a lot easier to skin, invision puts everything in multiple CSS files which is painful to skin. Then again we only have the two skins so far, maybe with some more expierance on invision it becomes easier.

Charlie l find the support at vBulletin.com tremendous :) Asked a question yesterday about a bug some one stated was in the software, and got a response within 15 minutes, that's gotta rock imho. The support at invision is equally as good, and it's always nice to have one of the admins step in if you get into some real problems with your board :) For your $30 per year at vb.com you get a ticket system with faster response time, which comes in real useful. The support team at vB really know their stuff. I believe there's a similar paid service at Invision but haven't checked it out.

This might be a personal opinion, but l believe there is a better range of hacks here than at ibplanet (member there as well). Of course the hack list grows steadily day by day at both sites. (One of these days l'll think up something vb.org doesn't have, so far everytime l think of something it's already been done and posted up).

We have a couple of php gurus onboard (actually three now l think) so generally they will code up anything that's not available.

I haven't done any hacks for vB so can't comment on how easy this is, hacking invision is a breeze though. If a techno lamer like myself can do it, anyone can.

Decision on either software, it's up to personal preference. I like both :) Though must admit the smilies put me off invision for a while, but once you get used to them they are fine. Actually our graphics admin has created something like 50 or so for invision, she gets a kick out of making them and sharing them :)

There you go, view from some one who uses both. Naturally it turned out to be make your own decision :lol: Both are fine, l guess one thing to make a decision on is if you aren't a real graphics and CSS guru, then vBulletin is a much better option for skinning, which is simple and quick to do. We have something like seven style sets for vBulletin and 2 for invision. Actually thinking about that, you could always grab some one else's skin at invision, there's a heck of a lot of them available for free.

Charles l'm actually working on the collapsible category thing, and will post the hack at ibplanet when it works. This will probably be a day after some one else does it :lol:

HTH

Does anyone else think that vBulletin has become a status symbol of sorts? It seems to me most boards that want to look "professional" use the software. Am I crazy?

- RiZ

It's definitely one reason people buy it because it shows that they are indeed dedicated towards their site such that they're spending money on it.

It's easy for me... In the past 7 years I have gone through UBB, Ikonboard, PHPBB and VBulletin board systems, and all of the problems with stability and flexibility stopped when I started using VB in 2001 for my high traffic sites. I hear Invision boards are pretty good, but I am not about to fix what ain't broke. :)

Had to jump in on this.. I have gone through board hell in the last year...

Here is what I have noticed..

Yabb/UBB...
just does to seem to have a lot of functions I wanted. So I never installed them. If I need mroe than 5 patches to get what I want, its too much. Things can get buggy.

Ikonboard...
While it seemed nice, it just was not going to work for me for various reasons. Corrupting the DB on instal is not a good way to start though. I did like it though for the 2 weeks I ran it.

PHPbb..
I liked., I really did . Worked great.
However, it was VERY taxing on ther server. Its a very inneficient forum. It brought down the server too many times.. Which is why I now run Invision. Like someone else said, once the database hit around 50 megs, things started happening.. If you run a small site, this is the board for you, really. Just watch your resources. As soon as you start to grow, skip straight to VB. Really.

Invision.
Great prog... Kinda Dropped my resources compared to PHPbb (75% bandwidth, 15% cpu approx). Too bad it has loads of small problems. I could probably fix them, but frankly, I do not want to spend anymore time on it. It will hold me through untill I can get a copy of VB going. I think its troubles are holding back my site at this point.

VB...
I only got to test it out, it was not my board. But its less resource intensive, more stable, and just plain works like it should. I have seen some massive sites running it with no trouble.

I also tried some other less known ones, but most were more like a Beta than a release.

I too hate the thought of shelling out that kind of money, but after the problems I have had, if it works like I know it will, its worth it. Its a drag having to constantly fix databases, and errors all the time. Frankly, in the end I think I will be kicking myself for not doing it sooner.

I have installed IPB 1.2, and let me tell ya, it seems pretty slick.

Bottom line at the end of the day.

Vbulletin is the best and the best support.

Sure they are costly (one time fee) but worth it. They are a company who wish to make money hence the word of their valued customer’s means more to them then if this was some weekend procject they do between a full time job.

I seen some saying "scripts should be free" well then so should any program since it was just "writen by someone".

Like many have already said. If you want a real "community" then buy vb or lease it for a year and see how you like it.

As for people talking good about it just becuase they "put out the money" that is foolish seeing as they have nothing to gain by posting they like it. They had serious sites and wanted a serious board.

I fully agree. Although I am not a PHPBB user (Ikonboard is my free board of choice) I'd have to say that so many of the boards that are setup with an Ikonboard forum are just made by someone saying "OH! A free board! Let's see what I can do!," while paying for vB seems to make people dedicated to having their sites work.

Not that Ikonboard is bad, far from it, I like it very much. It's just that vBulletin's all around the net have a community presence of some sort. I never have seen an empty one that just sat there dead. $160 is too much to pay for that.

I converted from Ikonboard to Invision (someone sweet-talked me and I regret it) to vBulletin when I got the coffers up, and we are debuting vBulletin as the new "Today's Music Forum" and are completely changing the concept of our site.

I, like all other vBulletin owners, am commiteed and dedicated to making my site work. Plus, I love the "customability!"

yeh i agree 1.2 version of Invision is excellent

http://sensations.wambam.net for my invision side :P
i would say its better then the standard vb 2.3 but i can't find my hacks on it

plus i think it needs more standard bbcode like vb3 has standard left align right align and has features that resize images

:surprised:

phpBB: phpBB was the first ever board that I ever chatted in, which lead to my first board I admin-ed [on a subdomain] and from there, the experience just grew. The hacks took me several days to complete, the instructions weren't really clear, but thats not all. For the schemes, they are not really customiable, and a lot of graphics to do with. They do not have collasable categories/forums and that proved a hindrance because of the activities in my forum. The permission settings can go konky sometimes and ordinary members could see my admin's forum from time to time.

ETA: You have to change templates in the file itself, so it doesn't really serve its purpose. :D

Ratings: 6 half/ten

Ikonboard: Collapsable forums were a plus, but besides that, there wasn't much to modify and the feeling just wasn't there for me.

*Shrug* I only used Ikon for 2 - 4 days, so.. Yeah.

Ratings: six/ten

Invision: I've tried both invisions [on the free server, and on my own] and the only thing I dont like was how the header couldn't be modified - There was always the image that couldn't be removed. The hacks were relatively okay, and I could get some good support, but some people were hostile and I stopped using invision after a few months.

Ratings: 8/10

vB: What I am using now. Definitely customiable, great support for both the board and hacks, and the best of the lot. Modification of the templates were easy enough, and with some help, I installed the hacks pretty easily.

Ratings: 9 half/10

or be like Invision Power Board and PMS when you change classes in a DIV tag. (Which caused several functions to be "not authorized")

I was a software developper for 17 years (dBase II, dBase III, clipper, FoxPro, Visual FoxPro ) who now I quit and I strongly disagree with you.

If you build a 1 room house you will have to pay the materials and labor for every room. If you buy a 10 room house every room will be cheaper since you pay once the architect, the engineer, etc, but every room will stil cost you a lot since you must still pay the materials and labor. If you build a 1000 room house the same logic applies: Lower cost, but every room has a very important cost

In software, the price of every program that you sell is almost zero, you may download it from a server, so in many cases the guy that builds a 1000 room palace may get all the market, since making that palace is expensive but the cost of every aditional palace sold is very small, so if one company spends thousand of hours developping great software there are good chances that it would end dominating the market, since they would be able to sell thousands of programs to cover the cost, and every new customer will pay to better and already good program, and customers will lost interest in competing software that is not as good. So in software you actually get the result of thousands of hours of skilled and very expensive labour for almost nothing. This is more or less what happened with Windows, Excel and Word.

I am here in order to choose and purchase bulletin board software. My customer told me that I could program it, I know that would be the best for my personal finances. I say no, it is useless, you should choose a ready made product, debugged, a program that is thousands of hours of labor of many people, a program that is tested, a program thas was used by millions so the features in it represents the needs of those millions users, a program that will go on growing and bettering and you will pay almost nothing for the skilled and expensive labor that is necesary for those improvements.

Anyway learning php has a cost, since time is valuable, and I doubt a single guy can make something as big as vBulletin alone. I tried to do that with accounting software in my Latin American country, and I lost a lot of money (even tough I was not by myself). I just do not want other people to make my mistakes. There is an enormous market for custom made software, I lived from that all my life and lost that money trying to make "off the shelf software". I think one should develop off the shelf software (like vBulletin) ONLY if one has a strong possibility of being the market leader, because the market leader will take all.

If you want a quiet life I suggest forgetting about trying to make "mass software" (I do not know what name to give to software that SHOULD NOT BE CUSTOM MADE, software that solves the problems of millions of persons without needing code changes as vBulletin is) and do only custom software. I just want other people not to repeat my mistakes.

I am here also looking for the market leader, I think vBulletin is it. Probably I will recommend my customer to buy it.

Well I have now had my VB board online for a month or so.. Basically its all I expected. A few things were not as I liked, but most was easily fixed.

I still think $160 is a bit much, but it really is teh most stable forum I have run yet, and is a worthy investment. If your site is worth that kind of investment.

If yoru running on a budget server, you probably do not have the need for Vb (server load, and member count), but if your like me, running a dedicated server, with loads of hits and such, then yes, it is very well worth the investment, as its capable of the traffic that type of sever can handle.

Would I buy VB again.. definately.

Hey, I wrote that hack for YaBB. :D
YaBB was great for my smaller community, and to give me a chance to write a lot of my own custom hacks and contribute to the community.

But now I'm reaching the quarter-million mark for number of posts, and flatfile just won't cut it. So here I am, a perl man converted to vB. And I must say, I'm impressed.

- Dave Baughman

Speaking of support. Does anyone know if there is a mirror site for vB forums. I haven't been able to get their site to come up for the past two days.

Frank

Its a common problem Michigan which has numerous threads on this site :)

It is a result of vB blocking IP's due to recent Ddos attacks.

Email support@vbulletin.com stating your problem and you IP and they should help you get access once again.

Goodluck.

Thanks MindTrix,
I appreciate it.

Frank

No problem mate, goodluck.

Alright...

I read the first 2 pages, and I just felt an urge to write my own thoughts.

Now I been using vBulletin for about 6 months or so (give and take a month) and frankly before hand I was with the group of people who felt $160 was too much to ask, and I didn't see all the hype over vBulletin.

Though... when I got vBulletin and tried it out, I finally saw why vBulletin is truly worth $160. I have used YaBB and phpBB in my past, but truly was blown away by vBulletin.

The only way to really understand why vBulletin is worthy of the $160 is to use it yourself. So before you say vBulletin isn't that great... I'd say at least try it out, because I know I am hooked on vBulletin.

Well that was my 2cents, hope I didn't bore anyone :ermm:

i know what ya mean about being hooked on vbulletin once you used it you don't wanna use anything else

nice to see ya here hehe
i used to love yabb and still do since it was my first board but yabb just don't cut it anymore

Ok, to put it simply, what does vBulletin have in terms of features compared to IPB v2, and I'm not talking about support.

the main feature for me is the easiest skinning that vbulletin provides

but other features i'll check out on my localhost and draw up a comparison chart for you

Can anyone tell me what the main differences are between vBulletin and IPB v2?

IPB version 2 is not final yet.

I realise that, but 99% of the features are there already. Its only really bug testing at the moment.

I've played with 2.0 and I like vB3 much more. I've seen nothing compare to a vb3 admin cp at this point. Perrmissions work much better in a vB then a ipb imo, I am running a ipb atm on one of my communitys. We've ran into so many problems with it we are going to have to convert it to vB3.

Agreed. I recently purchased ExpressionEngine by pMachine and was surprised how clean their code looks like compared to vB3 ;)

I can see this is old, because what I recently heard is that iB cut all support to members who didnt shell out for their software :P

Smart, computer savy users use linux because it is much more secure. It may be harder to use, but there are more options than in Windows. Windows is more for the dumb user, are you saying that I should get Invision PowerBoard instead of vBulletin because vBullletin is crappy, unstable, unsecure, and extreemly slow?