Poster
Which forum software wins overall between vBulletin and IPB? Can you provide your opinions on which forum board you guys prefer and the reason behind it?
It's a large debate and when I tried to research, I couldn't find a convincing reason on which one to buy. Hopefully FST will do better. I do know that there are many free forum boards out there but I want to choose between vB and IPB.
I'm not very knowledgeable about which one is better when dealing with statistic's. But the websites that deal with IPB are down a lot, which i know from personal experience.
Poster
Do you know the reason for the downtime? Is it the server that's hosting it or is it an error in IPB? The way you wrote it sounds like IPB is more frequently used by people therefore the sites (that have downtime) is more commonly seen compared to the fewer amount of vB users (and their downtime).Originally Posted by AceofSpace
However, thanks for your insight. I'll definitely factor that into my decision.
woowoo
vBulletin was for a long time the superior software. It was written in a much better coding style, and was much more scalable. IPB would lag on large sites where vB could keep running fine.
That was in the past though, I have no idea how IPB is doing for large sites now or how it's coded. As far as I know it has caught up with vB.
If you go the vBulletin root I recommend you stick with 3.8 for now and upgrade to 4.1 when it is available (probably end of the summer).
There are plenty of skins available for vb3.8 (and plenty of hacks/mods/plugins/products on vbulletin.org).
There are not many skins available for vb4 at the moment because the skin coding is going to be redone in 4.1. This is why I say wait until 4.1 (You could have to make your own skin for 4.0, and then redo it in 4.1).
Poster
@tesco: Have you tried IPB and vB? I wanted to ask what is more user friendly when it comes to setting up and editing. And perfect, I was planning to get a forum board a little bit before the end of summer. Thanks!
For reference, does anyone know how IPB and vBulletin differ in coding?
woowoo
Well vBulletin always had more options/settings, including forum permissions, usergroup permissions, forum settings, and etc.
Which meant that vBulletin was harder to setup, but you had more control over what your site did.
Over the years with vBulletin adding more and more features and settings the admincp has become a little overpopulated.
It's not hard for me to find anything in it because I've been following it so closely over the years as these features were added, so I have no idea how hard it would be for a beginner.
The IPB admincp offers less options but is more user friendly, and more pleasing to the eye (only the admin sees the admincp so who cares about that).
I think both softewares offer an admincp demo, why don't you try those out and see for yourself?
<3 FST
BT Rep: +2
The OP said he wanted to choose between vB and IPB, not other source codes.
Poster
Thank you.
@ahstanford: I'm just looking between vB and IPB. Still haven't found a convincing opinion or answer..
Edit: Which one is better adapted for a private forum?
Last edited by AvailableName; 04-25-2010 at 08:59 PM.
Well, excuse me for trying to do the OP a favor and direct him to more suitable and free software.
If you take a moment to read vBull.net you will see that since vB was sold (I used to be an avid user of vBulletin) it has sort of gone down the tubes. It's become more and more bloated and is now considered a full-blown publishing suite. On top of that, it's quite expensive. Developmentally-speaking, it's a bit behind the times.@ahstanford: I'm just looking between vB and IPB. Still haven't found a convincing opinion or answer..
Edit: Which one is better adapted for a private forum?
As for IPB - well, it was never a preferred solution of mine. I haven't used the new version - which seems to have a lot of new features. I'm not as experienced with IPB as I am with any other forum software, because it's just not of my preference. With that said, back when I used it - it had horrible SEO results due to non-semantic markup. Judging on a quick view source of their new version, nothing has changed - it appears to be highly non-semantic and generally bloated.
To answer your question directly, I would prefer to use vBulletin over IPB for a private forum due to preference and familiarity. Though, I admit I'm not entirely qualified to determine the better of the two considering I haven't used the new version of IPB.
With that said, SMF is free and I really like the software they offer. One of the great things offered with SMF is the logic flow control that is offered in the templating system - something most forums lack to offer at all. This was the reason SMF was always favorable to me - BUT... SMF is kind of in the middle of "imploding." The guy who did the majority of the programming to make SMF has left and is rumored to be creating another forum software. You can read more on that here.
Finally, due to the "implosion" of SMF I have been using one of the younger forum software packages. This is MyBB and it's free. My only problem with MyBB is the lack of logic flow control that it offers in the templating system - but there is a mod to resolve that issue. Another perk of MyBB is that it has a thriving community with endless modifications, themes and support offered for free. For the time being, this is my forum software of choice.
Best of luck to you.
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