We all know vB is the best, but where do the others rank?
 

What do you think? I have tried other boards and found that vB is the most user friendly and most customizable.

Is phpBB better than UBB? Is XMB better than the rest? Where do you rank the others, and why?

:)

IPB is without a shadow of doubt a very close second :)

I've heard that XMB is like a sieve when it comes to security, but that was a year or so ago. Regardless, CPanel does not include XMB anymore that I know of.

I assume you're comparing PHP/MySQL message board scripts; remember there's Jive and other scripts.

XMB is awful, and as filburt said a 'sieve' with secruity.

IPB is pretty good for a free board, better than phpBB IMO

XMB sucks because it is buggy as hell.
Invision Board is the next best thing to vBulletin
PHPBB is ok but I HATE HATE HATE the AdminCP.

Dark Shogun

I like both IPB and phpBB. One of my favoruite things to do when not working or anything is just mess with the free softwares and stuff. I used to love phpBB, but after using IPB I'd say it has gone ahead as my favorite other board. :D

no one mentioned ubb

UBB is very old, and not that good IMO

what about opentopic, that seems to be infopops baby now

UBB is way way way way way wayway to costly i mean open topic and threads and such

even classic is more expensive than vB and its java and cgi :\

UBB.threads is ok, ive seen it working on LARGE sites but i cant look at there server

XMB has been banned on server webhosts that im aware of

IPB and phpBB are both ok... but i dont personally like using them that much

vBulletin 3.x.x comes first with IPB *very* close in second.

UBB is very low in the rankings.

phpBB comes pretty far behind VB, then everything else after that.
IBP kinda did my head in last time i used it.

IPB is first at this point, better than vb3 as it stands right now(beta).
Waiting for vb 2.3.999999999 :D
XMB with alot of hacks isnt a bad starter board, but all the bad coding and as stated security issues place it below phpbb.

IPB is close to vB2, but it doesn't beat vB2, much less vB3, IMO.

I hate them all, though, except vB.

IBP and phpBB, of course... but which one, I have no idea. Both have their qualities, and are very good free boards. I kind of like the phpBB templates a bit better.

to me IPB and vBulletin are equal, the only thing holding IPB back is the fact that it's a +++++ to customise, if IPB had a decent template based system, it would beat vB3 hands down

I would not be so sure about this...
Not really impressed with the code, but that's just me... IMO, it's a huge difference in code quality between VB 2.x and IPB and I don't even try to compare it with VB3.

Heh, the IPB code is terrible, did you looked at it? Just analyse it and you will understand immediately what I mean...
I don't care about the look or colors, is equal to ZERO to me, the code is what it matters for your server health.

TECK of course vb2's code was better and vb3's code has improved on vb2's. However when you compare IPB's page loads to vb's on my 56k where page load speeds are noticed by me IPB is by far faster than both vb2 and vb3. Especially faster than vb3's showthread.. :)

And that is where it counts.
Last time I looked at IPB code to do a hack for user registration to combine 2 messages boards into one for my wife I found it very well formatted and easy to find the parts I needed to change. The db layer is very efficient. I don't see the code being messy at all. IMO it is very well written and on par with vb3 code.

exactly, and seeing as IPB has some pretty good support on it's forums, almost as good as vb.org's support i think it's a pretty close second, the templating system in IPB is the biggest letdown though, just by editing a simple file you can be approached with errors galore, if the next version of IPB had a better way of handling templates and skins, then i would prefer it to vB3, to me visually, vB3 is pretty poor template wise as well, not as the actual system, but the way it is laid out, for example the usercp templates and the breadcrumb, i enjoy vB2 a LOT more but sadly as soon as vB3 is made RC, all the hacks and support for vB2 will be limited, which is a shame, perhaps they can make a vB2 Gold version and keep it as a seperate "lite" script for vBulletin

Quoting Kier: "Style not final" ;) ^^

even if it isn't the final style, i'm sure it's not going to change completely, otherwise going to the beta version is a lil stupid, considering everything for them is going to change, the vB3 beta style is awful, especially the postbit and usercp templates

I've used phpBB on my localhost for testing, and am soon to use it as a community on a new website of mine, but I enjoy that software second to vBulletin.

I'm not very found of IPB, and see even Invision being above it.

Invision is IPB. ;)

Er.. I thought Ikon was termed as IPB? (which would explain why the abbreviations don't match) I had forgot it was Invision Power Board and not Invision Board (IB). Sometime ago I recall looking into Ikon board and saw something about it called as IPB-lite.

Eh heh.... yeah, anyway. So, (1) vB (2) phpBB (3) Invision. ;)

has anyone tried myBB, looks completely identical to vBulletin, yet it's free, check it out

yeah, there are quite a few vB look-a-likes out there...

this is more than a lookalike, this is like....vBulletin's evil twin brother, the code is similar, it has every feature of vBulletin, it looks exactly the same, the files are even the same name, i'm suprised the Jelsoft lawyers arn't having a field trip with these yet

haven't checked the code... will do now :P

[EDIT]
mailed to piracy@vbulletin.com

[EDIT]
and reported to IPB

Well if myBB ever really takes off, then i reckon that since it's free, it may end up surpassing vBulletin, as it's like....near exactly the same forum, but for free

If they don't get shut down that is :D

What made you come to the decision of reporting em?was it that they had <br> in their source the same as Vbull ? And im pretty certain Vbull or jelsoft are aware of any other boards (free or paid for) out there (as its wise to keep an eye on the competition)


Deffo a close second aint it.Infact i would recommend this for anyone wanting a board thats as close to vbull but cant afford the license.
Remember though Free usually has its downsides as well as you get nothing good for nothing and i dont reckon Vbull has anything to worrie about - or maybe they have as vb3 is gonna be its downfall as its not backwards compatible and basically it means a lot of boards having to restart again with hacks etc and the templates - well we wont talk about that - its crazy what they done.

Well sure vBulletin is going to have much more to offer than a board such as myBB, but if that was the case then everyone would be with vBulletin, and phpBB and IPB wouldn't be doing as well as they are. On the IBPlanet forums, the support there for modding is just as fast as it is here, in some cases faster, i know that it gets nowhere near as fast (or good) as directly contacting the vB dev team, but still a load of people modify their forums, and even though they are all flawed in some way, these forums are doing great and have some amazing forums out there

I reported it because they have EXACTLY (examples here btw) registration form as vB, and EXACTLY the same usercp as IPB. There are other things. This is not allowed according to the license agreements.

yep, exactly the same, even the url's

If you noticed. MyBB removed there download of beta 4 after they were contacted by our lawyers. Thats all I'll say.

Regarding the slow lodaing times on 56k this WILL be addressed in the final style, more css usage and Kier plans to make the css file an external file so that it wont need to be included in the header and it can be cached by the browser.

That sounds great! :)

Can you explain Scott more in details, how you see the differences between VB and IPB?
Thanks. :)