Which Bulletin Board is better?

[ODC]

Well say what you will about phpBB, but it is important to note that the page, as well as others attacked at the same time, was taken down using an exploit in awstats, and had nothing to do with phpBB. As far as redundancy, the area51 server (now offering support), knowledge base, and IRC support channel are still online.

Granted, an open sourced project isn't going to have the financial backbone paid applications will, but that does not prohibit them from making very good software, or offering great support.

I ask how many hours has the phpBB server experienced downtime over the past year? Just because you can point to one incident doesn't mean a think. Even Microsoft's mighty services fail from time to time, especially hotmail and instant messaging.

One can't point to a singular incident and make a blunt statement "see what phpbb get's you?".

[prathapml]

But well, a commercial site has far more resources at its command and can recover quicker.

Also, being that the only motivation to improve the product is peer-recognition, and reputation, the development pace can go at turbo speed with wonderful capabilities being provided, but presently that's not happening.

Invision has 5x more features and is good in the intangibles part as well (server load, general appearance, the modding community, and so on...).

Having said that, I accept that a single incident can't be isolated and pointed out, but it just happened to have happened at the same time this was being discussed, lol.

No offense to anyone, of course. Its only an objective discussion, individuals need not feel bad.

[ODC]

Oh, no offense taken. Unfortunately, I have much more to worry about in life than someone's choice of forum software. I agree that a commercial site has more resources and speedier development. Case-in-point, the over 2 year development period of phpBB3. However, speedier development does not necessarily mean a better product.

Yes, invision has 5x more built-in features, but many if not most were phpBB "mods" before being added to Invision, and let's not forget where Invision's style came from... a blatant rip of phpBB. I'm not saying this is a bad thing-- once again, the open source community improved the product that you choose. We're all winners.

[prathapml]

Having used an IPB forum first, it was quite surprising to see that phpBB did not have a way to print the topic (to save it all at once). Then found this place had the mod to enable that - print-topic mod.

The story carried on, with a "mod this" and "mod that" for such basic features which I'd grown used to. So it just started to feel pretty inadequate. The average load it put on the server gave an excuse to move out....

In a corporate environment, the cost of buying the forum software you use does not matter quite as much as having needed features easily accessible, low downtime and fast official support (to the extent of getting fixes custom-made for you). Unlike official support sites, user-supported forums tend to snap at you if you request a quality fix quickly (understandable, since they are doing it on a casual basis).

Oh well, to quickly put together a small forum that exists for a non-essential purpose, phpBB still fits fine. Very few open-source options are available in the forum area and this one is the best of the lot. As far as v3 of it goes, checking out area51 is not very encouraging.... it hardly looks like competition to the big ones. I hope it will improve to the point where it can be on par with the best - at that point, I'd be ready to make a contribution to the project as well. At its current pace, its going to play catch up for years yet.

[sonu27]

You can add more thing to phpBB than IPB because it's open source.

Nice find prathapml.

Still IPB is un-beatable.

[prathapml]

Still IPB is un-beatable.

Exactly what was said above!

Just to illustrate more of what we tend to take for granted with IPB, here's examples:

Ability to choose email subscription type. Ability to get a copy of what was posted and by whom, to be mailed to you. A clean interface...

And of course, if you moderate/admin a large forum, that's when you see all of Invision's features in their full glory, since its really excellent from that angle.

Security issues, there's a lot of difference too. When you register on a phpBB forum, you get your password mailed to you in plain-text.

Yes, I know there's mods/hacks for each of what I'm describing above. But well, it does get tiresome if you need to install 430 mods to get to what is standard for you with something else. Whereas with IPB you start off on a good base, and have millions of hacks available to improve it from all sides.

You can add more thing to phpBB than IPB because it's open source.

Argh.. when will people come out of this mis-conception. Being open-source does not by itself confer better quality on something. And of course, you can add more to phpBB, but that's only because its missing more. And then, its a fact that if your purpose is to build your community feeling you won't have much time for forum modding - and conversely if you are forum modding all the time, its very unlikely you have anything more than a very tiny community.

The point of concern here is, when you ask about some feature that is quite basic, the phpBB forums often responds with a reply which goes something like:

yeah, we have that feature too, but in a less-developed form - and because you have got atleast this much for free, be happy with it and @#$!%

wtf!

[angadsingh007]

Dont get offended, but this is a stupid poll

I myself am a PHP developer..

I think Invision is the only proper forum application available in the god **** galaxy..

But, phpBB is not bad when it comes to being *FREE*

[sonu27]

Well now that we have version 2 of IPB, I no-one can change my mind.

[arnold991]

What is Bulletein Board ? Does it allow me launch my own forums like this one ?