^This. I don't get how any of you guys would go for vBulletin after the price hike that makes them rush releases for your money. Then what? The Buggy vBulletin 4? Then what? Their infamous "database" hack that made it on BBC News? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10714192 Looks like someone didn't do their security audits. I have never had a spam attack or bad customer service as long as I have been with IPB. I never had to do any modifications to fix things up. Thank goodness for their spam service. vBulletin's support never helped me with my problems or even how to get the stuff I need done. I had to basically learn everything in the dark. That is obviously helpful when they're the last Admin CP to use iFrames. Even phpBB has a better-designed Admin CP than vBulletin does. Having said that, I'm actually beginning to have a really niche with MyBB. After adding Google SEO and some header tags to my templates, I'm beginning to brew a niche amongst lower-to-average Rock Band users. My SERPs have also been doing really well, and I've been beginning to make a profit without spending much. I do learn a lot from reading non-fiction, how-to books and articles. XenForo looks good. Why? Well, vBulletin was good because you had Kier and Mike driving it to be good. When they left, vBulletin lost its order under the development of Internet Brands and "vBulletin Solutions." If XenForo is successful, I can guarantee you vBulletin will be the next IkonBoard. And for those of you who don't know, Matt Mecham of IPS previously worked on Ikonboard. I just don't see the cost-effictiveness of vBulletin (or even worse, with vBSEO as well).
The reason most people when with that price is because they thought that vBulletin was the best and until then it was. Also it wasn't until after they had 'upgraded' to version 4 that they realised how crappy it actually was, by this time it was too late.
But Kier sums it up correctly. In an interview at ForumPromotion.net, he essentially said that they wanted a complete rewrite of vBulletin when version 4 comes around, but Internet Brands thought otherwise. When IPB 3 came out, that was a complete rewrite as well, and look how successful that was compared to IPB 2.3. XenForo's pricing is very fair. Kier's right, they are absolutely new (and I highly doubt they used a single line of code of vBulletin), so it wouldn't be fair to price it up IPB/vBulletin's level quite yet. They're not going to give a community suite cause why should they? They have to focus on XenForo 1.0 before they can get any of that done.
Explain why. Explain why. Did phpBB 3 use <h1> tags, FURL, or any of that stuff? phpBB with phpBB SEO, I could understand.
as informed by rectangleman...I am with myBB bcos of modularity. I am working on one more forum with vbulletin...but overall mybb is way to go
I am currently using free SMF in my Nigeria Forums. And the software is even free. I wonder if there is any difference between the free Simple machine forum Software and other paid forum software?
There's a lot of difference between paid and free software. It's hard to give a full detailed report of the difference because each vary so much. Having said that it doesn't always mean that paid is better, personally if I had to choose between any free script and vBulletin 4 - I would go with free without hesitating.