Thinking of switching from IPB to vBulletin

[AshleyF]

Hi,

I run a charity forum (UK based) and have since 2004 been an IPB user to power our forums. In the last 3 or 4 years their level of customer service as declined, and their refusal to help those of us in the EU comply with the cookie law (stupid law I know) as been the final straw, so I am looking to switch our forum software to a new provider.

I posted on www.vbulletin.com earlier and a user suggested I post on here to see if some of the additional features I am looking for would be available as mods?

As anyone used IPB recently and can offer a comparison of the two platforms?

Also, this is a list of features we use with IPB, are these available for vBulletin?

• Easy access to Skin and CSS Customisation to match our main website brand#
• Built in chat software
• Blogs
• User status updates to show on forum homepage
• We use a mod for ibProArcade games, is there an equivalent mod for vBulletin with lots of games, or use of existing games
• A mod to allow us to import threads and users into vBulletin from IPB
• Ability to set different usergroups all with different permissions to access different forums
• RSS feed so we can automatically pull in stories from our main Drupal site

In addition to those forum features, I wonder if the following are available for vBulletin which would tip my move over to vBulletin.

• We use Drupal for our main website, I want users to only have to use one login, is there the ability to link vBulletin to Drupal so that users only have one login, either with Drupal which can be used for VBulletin, or for vBulletin which users can use on Drupal?
• In order to comply with the new EU law, can vBulletin provide a simple list of cookies the standard forum software uses, and what each does? This will allow me to ensure my website can be made legal in my country.
• Fast support (within 24 hours) whilst we pay for a license to use vBulletin

Bound to be more features we use, that I need to check will work, but off top of my head the above are what I can think of. Is the Admin panel easy to use and understand after moving from IPB?

Thanks, Ashley.