Wow I didn't realize this thread was continuing all this time - I need to double check my "instant notificatin" options in the profile. I have installed VBulletin, and I am VERY excited about it. It's working well, the import from phpBB went seamlessly, despite having to convert my nuked phpBB data into phpBB2 style tables. I'm using the default color scheme, slightly tweaked at the moment, but I plan on changing. My visitors had been asking for a dark text on light background anyway, so they have it for now. I'm really enjoying all the features - especially the user reputation thing. I want to do something like assign moderators 20x more weight then users, that way WE have the most say on who's an expert, but the users feel like they're involved. I'm about to use VB's amazing newsletter system which is very customizable to sound out my monthly announcements, I like that it sends them out in batches and you can add variables like $username. Hello, $username, thanks for registering! etc... It has been SO worth the money I can't even tell you guys, thanks for the advice...I just have to woo my forum chatters back, the site crashed last week because nuke has a definite limit and it couldn't handle the traffic (which wasn't much by your standards), so all my visitors ran away, that's where the newsletter will come in. The site definately has an edge now over other forum/chat sites about my topics, software-wise, so I need to get discussion going again. I realize that VB3 has an archive module that will let search engines crawl around and munch, and I've heard it's very effective. However, I've also found hacks to put into VB that will make it even more crawler friendly - are those worth the installation, or are they unnecessary server load. To be honest, my server cant take complicated things, hence the entire site redesign. Google has been all over the archives since I installed VB, however nothing showing up in the serps yet, I realize it might take a few days or weeks, I'm not concerned. I redirected cached versions of old (deleted) forum posts to my forum index, so at least visitors from search engines aren't greeted by 404's. Any comments on the spider friendly mods or should I just be happy with the Archives? Oh yes, here's a link. Sorry about the total default color scheme, getting it up was about speed - I'll make it prettier later: http://www.tubanews.com/forums
Not my opinion -_-, if you use static url on phpBB it will kick vB ass, I have both a vB board and a phpBB board, my phpBB board is indexed daily and has much more pages indexed then the vB board and I made the vB board first so it is not my opinion it is a fact, my gaming site uses vB because I wanted a forum that allows downloads but guess what, big mistake, phpBB allows downloads with a mod. about the "hacking boards" as long as your boards up-to-date then you wont be hacked, visiting the phpBB site once a week will be worth it if you want a quality site, if you don't have time to check for patches once a week then get vB, otherwise your site will end up doing better with phpBB, trust me
Your kidding right??? Check the phpBB site once a week to check for patches? Why should it be necessary to constantly have to check for patches? That is reason alone to go with vB!
phpbb2 is extreamly insecure. I have had 2 boxes rooted in the last year and each time it was a phpbb2 exploit and they were at current code. I just had this happen 2 days ago and there is no fix yet. edit - actually there is a security fix... look at the fix though --Delete lines 23-25 // Begin PNphpBB2 Categories Hierarchie Mod include_once( $phpbb_root_path . 'includes/functions.' . $phpEx ); // End PNphpBB2 Categories Hierarchie Mod phpbb2 has some sad code =(
Im looking to get VB 3.5 soon.. Does anyone know of any skins that are very clean and light on graphics... without all the 'fat' ? (light greytones background with black text) Kind of like the way webmaster world looks. Looking for a very simple basic skin that is highly usable.
There are some other free bb options other than phpbb to consider. My personal favourite is www.simplemachines.org - single click to mod_rewrite the board to static URLs, and simple to admin with a better security record than phpbb (the SMF developers are the ones behind YaBB SE). However, there are other free scripts out there, some of which also have interesting mods for search engine friendliness.
Brian, What's SMF? I'm not really up to speed with forums (apart from the security side or lack thereof, with phpbb)
Thank you! I just installed WordPress yesterday and I'm going to try running my personal site (which really doesn't have much of a purpose except being a portfolio/blog) with it. That way I can make announcements about new sites and post about random stuff that interests me, without being in an official capacity as editor of my main site TubaNews. Believe it or not, that site is quite important in my small, small musical niche...soon when I have time, I'm going to try to make some money off of it. lol.
They have a huge number of importers in their ImpEx system. I would check vBulletin's website to see if your specific one is supported or not as an automatic conversion or not.
vBulliten IS better than phpBB 2.x.. however, phpBB 3.0 is going to give vBulliten a run for its money. If vBulliten is worth the $160 extra, I'm not sure. For small forums, probably not. But if you have a large community (espically if you have a thousand members or more) its probably worth the extra flexibility that vBulliten gives you. Oh, and as for phpBB updates.. I'm pretty sure the latest version has an automatic update checker, and once you login to the admin page it will tell you if there is a newer version. If not, I know its in phpBB3. Josh
They said that about PHPBB 2. Didn't happen. Also, vB 3.5 is in beta - basically, they've recoded so that no matter what modifications you make to the forums, you can update your vb files without losing them. Excellent idea.
First, you don't need to check the phpBB site once a week for patches. You don't need to check the site at all -- notifications are now automatic if you choose that option or even just check your ACP once in a while. Second, phpBB isn't patched anything like once per week. Not even close. There are some advantages of vBulletin over phpBB. There are also some advantages of phpBB over vBulletin. You look at the features of both (and a few other alternatives, although these are clearly the two best developed and best supported) and you select one or the other based on your needs and personal preferences. I don't think the propaganda or competition-bashing is at all helpful here, any more than it is with the neverending Microsoft v. MAC v. Linux, or Internet Explorer v. Firefox debates. To be fair to phpBB, some of those security risks were created by PHP, not phpBB. Also, the "sad code" you reference here isn't phpBB per se, it's the Categories MOD, which has a number of documented problems. It also looks like you're using phpNuke rather than phpBB itself... again, that's a "port" of the basic phpBB software which has problems of its own, problems which you really can't blame on the phpBB development team -- blame the people who created it and who should support it. I'd also suggest that the phpNuke and phpPlus versions were created as attempts to make phpBB more like vBulletin -- if that's what you want, you may be further ahead just going to the original (vBulletin) rather than messing with the imitators, which really are neither phpBB nor vBulletin.
For quite some time now, that has also been true for phpBB. When they announce an update, simply check the support forum at the phpbb.com site and generally within 24 hours you'll find a MOD (usually courtesy of AcydBurn) which will make the necessary changes while preserving any MODs you've added. I haven't had to discard any MODs because of updates since I started with phpBB 2.06 -- and there are quite a few MODs, especially on two of the four forums I manage.