Thats not fair you are comparing an old version of phpbb to todays VB..check todays phpbb, check the forum in my signature and tell me whats wrong with the URL and you also check the index stats in google. I am ranking better than any forum for a lot of keywords. If seo configuration is done worng no matter what software you use you will be behind
actually it was with the latest version, 3.0.4 correct? anyway, even in your case, when your forum hopefully continues to get popular in the future you would make the switch to vB for the little extra features, i'll think about it and start the forum, thanks for all your feedback.
Please do NOT buy vb + vbseo together if you are saving to start a forum ... Starting and running forums is hard work ... Do not spend more than $100 (which will get you 1 yr of vB) if you have never run a forum before ... Most forums fail pretty soon after starting so it's a very bad idea to spend so much if you have to save up for it ... Make sure your forums starts running well and has great indexable and searchable content before you buy vbseo ... If your forum does not run well, all that money goes down the drain ... you can always buy vbseo later without affecting your user's experience (it will affect them slightly at most). Search engines can re-index your site and for the time you plan to run your site (with everyone believes is more than 10 yrs), the time taken to re-index will seem like a blip. If vbseo can't help search engines re-index fast, then why does it exist in the first place ?
Another option to consider is that vBulletin v4 will be released next year and it has more seo features than v3.7.x including friendly urls so vbseo might not be such a 'needed' plugin anymore.
thanks for the replies..didn't know about the vB4 thing, in that case it would be a waste..well then i think i'll get vBulletin only first and see how it goes.
Yes and no. They get an automated "please come back" flavor email at 90 days, but if I do a manual email I do not include people that have not logged in during the last 90 days, -Raymond
I always use vBulletin. I have used vBSEO on one forum where I thought it would be useful and the site has the potential to appear to a wide audience. Anyways, directly owned 3 forums, helped out on several others, and only used vBSEO once. So far I am liking it, but I have no idea how much good it is doing me. The site growing exponentially month over month, but at the same time I'm very active in my link building so vBSEO is not the only or biggest change over time. -Raymond