Free forum vs Vbulletin etc?

Chet Zar

Hey guys,

I'm setting up a new site and will want to include a forum. Does anyone have any recommendations - I am looking at vBulletin mainly, and also potentially phpbb. Just looking to set up a regular forum same as boards.ie really.

I presume the likes of these forums you need to pay to get a licence for are the way to go for a professional site - as in the free ones like proboards.com wouldn't have the same kind of functionality, e.g. the ability to moderate, ban users etc?

Thanks

mneylon

There are basically four options:

• Commercial self-hosted. ie. you get your own license of VBulletin or similar and host it yourself
• Commercial hosted - "software as a service" type thing. You pay monthly or on usage
• Open source self-hosted - using phpbb or vanilla or any of the other open source solutions
• Open source / community hosted - software as a service type solution

With any of the options where you host it yourself you will have pretty much 100% control over everything.

If you use one of the hosted solutions there may be limits of some kind

Ultimately I'd always opt for self-hosted, as you can move the data when you need to

Chet Zar

Blacknight wrote: »

There are basically four options:

• Commercial self-hosted. ie. you get your own license of VBulletin or similar and host it yourself
• Commercial hosted - "software as a service" type thing. You pay monthly or on usage
• Open source self-hosted - using phpbb or vanilla or any of the other open source solutions
• Open source / community hosted - software as a service type solution

With any of the options where you host it yourself you will have pretty much 100% control over everything.

If you use one of the hosted solutions there may be limits of some kind

Ultimately I'd always opt for self-hosted, as you can move the data when you need to

Thanks. So phpBB is obviously free if it is open source - how does it differ from vBulletin - it's probably harder to install?

What I'd be looking to do is set up a forum which would then be linked from my site, i.e. it wouldn't actually be hosted on the site. However, in the future I might look to host the forum within the site itself. I figure that doesn't matter either way since I can just embed the forum within the site itself then.

Hopefully vBulletin is easy to set up too?

mneylon

phpBB vs Vbulletin - awkward one

I have a bias against phpBB

They're both quite easy to install if you read the instructions.

bigjohnny80

PhpBB historically has been vulnerable to spam though I'm not sure if the last few updates have fixed this. Vbulletin seems better from what I've heard though I've not used it.

PhpBB is easy to install though, no harm doing that and seeing what u think

The_B_Man

I have a phpBB3 website and get zero spam. initially i got heaps but i added a "human question" to the register page and it cut it out completely.

I'd actually opt for phpBB3 since its free and all the add-ons are free. As far as I know, vBullettin charges for addons such as the arcade and SEO mods.

Chet Zar, if you wanna have a look at my phpBB3 site, then check out my sig. It'll give you a feel of what its like and you can compare with boards to see which one you prefer. Then go from there.

mneylon

The_B_Man wrote: »

As far as I know, vBullettin charges for addons such as the arcade and SEO mods.

That's not correct

The addons / hacks etc., aren't provided by Vbulletin. They're provided by 3rd party developers

Most of them don't cost anything.

A few, such as VBSEO are commercial, but most aren't

Chet Zar

Is there any reason then really why I'd go for vBulletin over phpBB if phpBB is free?

I quite like the look and feel of phpBB sites actually.

cormee

phpbb is fine to use on your site initially, if you want to take the forum to the next level upgrade to vbulletin. The vbulletin control panel is far more powerful and has some great admin features. It's a simple process to import your old phpbb data into vbulletin.

I found phpbb to be susceptible to spam but I see an earlier poster had no such problems.

Vbulletin has great community support, lots of free add-ons and plugins and VBSEO is well worth the money. One tip based upon my experience is I'd install it in the root directory of your site rather than in /forum or whatever, others might disagree, but I think the shorter url would have been more beneficial from an SEO pov.

cormee

Blacknight wrote: »

There are basically four options:

• Commercial hosted - "software as a service" type thing. You pay monthly or on usage

I know you're not specifically referring to vBulletin but I think they don't offer that option anymore.

(insert name)

You don'tseem too sure about it so could you do us a favour and post your hosting stats

e.g. Have you got the following: FTP access,PHP, MySQL or similar, Cpanel or Zpanel on some host-specific panel.

also have a look at SMF (simple machines forum), PunBB and IPB (Invision Power Board)(paid)

Don't use a hosted forum such as proboards or forumsplace etc... it looks cheap, often has the hosts ads in it and you cannot always choose styles/mods.

look into the seo thing too - not all forums are indexable as they are generated dynamically. To solve this, in phpbb anyway, you need a mod_rewrite addon (this changes the way page addresses are generated to allow them to be spidered)OR you could install a mobile/pda view with the view full thread link as these generally show up in the search results

I wouldnt be too pushed abot installing it in your root, maybe try a subdomain

for a small site/new site i'd install a free software as all forums can pretty much import each others db's

also, don't block attachments/hide links in in threads to nonsubscribers - one of the things i love about bords is that it allows me to do everything except post when not logged in