phpBB vs. vBulletin

i suppose the thread title says it all.

I like vBulletin myself - specifically what draws me to it is the threaded vs. linear mode capability. I hate threaded myself but it seems to be very popular in my experience. phpBB has a few hacks that do the same thing, but they didn't seem very clean last I looked.

Anyhow.... what are your thoughts? Why do you like one vs. the other? (besides price)

 

Just a couple of days ago, I wrote an argument for using vBulletin instead in my blog here. Anyway, I'll summarise why I prefer vBulletin over PHPBB (and I have used both for long periods of time (6 months +) so I'm not judging on a quick browser on the demos of one or the other.

Basically, PHPBB is free and you have to give it credit for that, but if you ever want to give the right impression to your visitors (especially important if it is a business forum) then vBulletin is the choice, because it isn't free and therefore you show your users quality. With PHPBB the impression is usually that the board is free so the site owner isn't willing to invest money in his users.

PHPBB is a board that is free of frills, and in this sense it is admirable, but when I had a PHPBB board, I always had to hack it for little simple things. vBulletin comes with these features (and they can also be easily turned off thanks to the great admin panel). My users love them so much more, and the features being standard makes upgrading the board so much easier, and the board in general much more secure.

That is another thing the PHPBB board lacks; security. There are constantly loads of holes, and timely updates that require doing. While on PHPBB, I had my board hacked numerous times, but in the 6 months I have had vBulletin I haven't had it hacked once. Plus, I've only needed to upgrade the boards once during that time.

VBulletin also has a better community behind it that are willing to do great mods, just take a look at vbulletin.org to see those, although the free style selection is nowhere near as good as for PHPBB. In summary, if you want to look pro or please your visitors get vBulletin. If you don't think they need all the features (and there are lots of useful ones in there) and you can't afford it, then PHPBB is the best option. It isn't as if vBulletin is expensive though, $85 a year is well worth it, and I've noticed a substantial growth increase after upgrading to vB. I'm only 15, and I can afford it, so I don't see why other people should have a problem in purchasing it. Purchasing it, just shows that you are prepared to invest time in your community.

(sorry if that argument was a bit weird, it is only 8am in the morning )

 

I started on PHPBB then when I new it was working i.e the forum topic , I then upgraded to VB (which is easy to import your phpBB into VB)

Might be the best way to go when you start out , as a lot of forums fail to take off

Just my two cnets

 

phpbb is terrible, new security flaws found for it everyday :/

 

What a coincidence that this thread comes up. Just yesterday I made that decision. I dediced on vBulletin for all the same reasons that BlueUniverse mentions.

 

I just installed phpbb a couple days ago; I'm just toying around with my forum for the first time and wanted something quick and cheap. The installation was effortless -- had the whole thing set up in an hour (and I'm not technical). But thanks for the insights....if I decide to pursue the forum seriously, I'll invest the small $ to upgrade to vBulletin.

 

Vbulletin is WAY better than any other forum software. VB is processing data from about 80 tables while phpbb2 40, IPB 64...

Still VB is faster in page loading. Hence I think VB is the best forum software.

 

vBulletin is faster? Here at DigitalPoint it is, because DP has obviously optimized it to make it that way. Every other vBulletin board I've visited has been like molasses.

I also have to say that IU think BlueUniverse's claim that a phpBB forum looks cheap is nonsense -- if you use it "out of the box", it's true it will look like every other out of the box phpBB forum -- if you use vBulletin out of the box, it will look like every other out of the box vBulletin forum.

I'd say the deciding factor is how much customization you are able to do or wish to do. There are free open-source pre-made mods galore for phpBB (I assume that's also true for vBulletin, except for the free part) and with a bit of effort you can learn how to customize phpBB even further.

The bottom line for most forum members is (1) content -- if it isn't interesting they won't care what software you're using; and (2) speed of page loading -- I've been on forums, especially vBulletin forums, where, being limited to a rural dial-up connection, it's simply way too frustrating to have to wait for another page to load and I just give up and go somewhere else.

 

Well its from my testing that found VB is better. The test server was a P4 1.4GHZ home machine with 128MB RAM over a 64kbps internet connection.

The s/w were installed as seperate folders on this machine and asked some of my friends to check the page loading time. Most of them commented as VB being faster.

I havent done any real-server tests yet.

 

I suggest you test them "in the wild" -- go visit several esatblished forums (fora? with established sizeable databases) and load a few pages on each one, with a sampling of vBulletin and phpBB. I have vistied a lot of forums and my experience consistently is that vBulletin non-optimized is significantly slower than phpBB non-optimized every time. When both are optimized, in most cases I see phpBB faster -- this forum being an exception.

 

A small difference.
I frequent as a end user on both phpbb and VB.
VB is cool because it can host our Avatar.(at least on DP anyway)
phpbb makes you upload it to your own webserver which is a pain.

I like and appreciate the features on VB, but phpbb was definately easier to use when it was my first time on a forum.

 

phpBB can host avatars. It's just up to the admin to choose whether or not they allow it.

I administer a phpBB board and frequent a few vBulletin ones. They both work well as forums. Either one will be successful based on the people/content that it has more then the software that is used. I think vBulletin is slightly nicer out of the box, but there is a wealth of free styles and mods for phpBB. Once you start customizing a little bit it can do everything you want it to.

 

Hmm... I haven't ever noticed a speed problem with either. I use kffl forums frequently (fantasy football) and they are pretty fast. Flyertalk is also pretty fast considering their traffic. (both vBulletin). Funny... Most of the forums I visit now are vBB and most of them started out as phpBB back in the day. I hadn't really noticed until I just started cruising around looking to speed compare.

 

Are you on dial-up?

 

me? no, I have high speed 96% of the time.

 

That's what I thought. That's why you don't notice the difference.

 

I was using a free forum for two of my sites, had a gut full when they started serving adsense in the forum.

When I went to change I went to the forums I found as a user to be the best [vBulletin].

As for the cost, we can't afford it... so I asked for a donation of owned versions and got 2 for our charitable sites.

They didn't do it cause I would make this post - I've asked for help for our non-profit work 1 million times and been told no and yes so many times.

When a company has no real profit in donating other than contributing what they can to help [e.g. not marketing exposure] it really get's my attention and respect.

So yes, vBulletin is the ultimate forum software - I knew this that's why I sought out the donation... they just get extra points in my book cause they wouldn't let us pay for it.

In terms of using it - there is nothing I want to do with it as a forum and can't.

 

I like either VBulletin or phpBB, I started on phpBB and I still use both. VBulletin is realy good and gives you more control, though less simple it's still easy to learn. PhpBB is VERY easy to use even though you have less power and it's free. It all depends on how much time you want to spend on it. Honestly it won't take much time for either though phpBB has more templates and hacks to choose from. I use EasyBB which is a pre-hacked form of phpBB, it's phpBB with a lot of add-ons and a lot of options. IF you want to check it out check out my forums at http://forums.freeminz.com/

 

I am an admin on both VBulletin and Phpbb boards.

I recently set up another phpBB board:

http://forum.downsizer.net/

Which I have templated to look a little like the associated mambo main site.

This was very easy with phpBB, not sure how easy it would have been with VBulletin? The user base is also shared between mambo and phpBB with a simple hack.

VBulletin does have a lot more out of the box, and you simply cannot compate the control panels, VBulletin wins hands down there.

But have I been tempted to pay out on a non commercial site for VBulletin. Frankly no. I think it is a bit like mobile phones! Most of what you actually need to do is talk, a lot of the bells and whistles are fairly meaningless. Once with phpBB you have done the "attachments" hack and a few others, what more do you really need?

jema