divs. Tables are not made for layouts. Where as divs are.
While "divs" have their place, they are definitely NOT a replacement for tables. You can't just throw a hundred divs in your page and call it good, that's just as messy as having nested table after nested table.
My answer to this question:
Quote:
Originally Posted by smartkidbk5
what would they use other then tables?
HTML. But, SEMANTIC HTML. Don't replace every table with a div, that's terrible practice. Just use semantics. If it's a list, put it in a list.. Unordered, ordered, or definition. Also, tables definitely have their place on a forum. Displaying topics in a table is perfectly semantic, though I do tend to use a list since it IS listing out threads, after all.
As for finding a better forum solution than vBulletin.. That depends on what you feel is better. Personally, I feel that the features are ridiculous, and the template is just a joke. I've said it a million times before, but Jelsoft should have developed a semantic layout for version 3.0.. If they had, I may still be using vBulletin to this day. Instead, I attempted to make one over and over but got frustrated with the terrible template editor that comes with vBulletin. Something better? To me? I like Vanilla. It's simple, to the point, and has better markup out of the box. Then when I want to change the markup, it's just about as simple as theming wordpress. Oh, and it's FREE.. Can't beat free.
vBulletin isn't practical anymore. It's extremely dated and there are several options out there that aren't. Even programming wise. It would be really nice to have vB in an MVC structure. I hated having to update stupid templates because it was no longer compatible after an upgrade. Pffft.