PhpBB vs VBulletin - Page 3

atta boy.. good luck. I would recommend the leased version to start out with.

--Tone

most definitely.. lease that bad boy for a year and then if my site is successful, buy the owned license!

even going with an owned license you still have an annual fee to get updates.

--Tone

Is it possible to use the Invision and PHPBB on the same server at the same time, each one running a different forum, yet sharing the same MySQL DB?

I would think so as you can change the db pre-test phpbb_ etc.

But why would you want to? It won't share the user base or anything.

--Tone

I just want to compare the two in real time so I can decide which I want to stick with

Vbulletin IMO
If you don't have the money and your community is not that serious use phpbb. If you have the money and want to give your community the best software use Vbulletin. It blows phpbb away. You get what you pay for with Vbulletin.

3.5 version it's on it's way, check out it's new features
There is also a beta available for 3.5

Vbulletin IMO
If you don't have the money and your community is not that serious use phpbb. If you have the money and want to give your community the best software use Vbulletin. It blows phpbb away. You get what you pay for with Vbulletin.

3.5 version it's on it's way, check out it's new features
There is also a beta available for 3.5

ya ,you are right that currently it blows phpbb ,but once phpbb 3 is released vbulletin will loose its popularity.have you heard of it........ :lol:

Why does it have to be phpbb 3 and not the current phpbb. Vbulletin will always be more advanced.

I have used both and I have to say that VB is worth the money you have to shell out. It has advanced features compared to any version of phpbb.

I was a PHPBB user, but the other night I d/l'd the YaBB forum software. I gotta say, the SMF theme that came with it looks really impressive:) It's got tons more functionality and ease of use than phpbb and it's free:)

eh hem!

I work for jelsoft :) I am Zachery from the vBulletin community.

There is nothing wrong with vBulletin or phpBB, they are both good scripts developed by professional developers, however they differ in the fact that phpBB is an open source script developed by coders who commit time to the project when they can, and vBulletin is developed fulltime by a set of developers, most of which have a full time job with us.

I haven't see the olympus code base, AFAIK its not out, but I do not think it will totally run par with vBulletin 3.0.x, and not 3.5.0

phpBB is a free script and backed by a free community who devotes their time when possible.

vBulletin is a paid script backed by both a community of users who are also using the software, but also by a paid support team who is avaible near 24/7/365.

But in the end its really your call and your decision on what you think is best :)

eh hem!

I work for jelsoft :) I am Zachery from the vBulletin community.

There is nothing wrong with vBulletin or phpBB, they are both good scripts developed by professional developers, however they differ in the fact that phpBB is an open source script developed by coders who commit time to the project when they can, and vBulletin is developed fulltime by a set of developers, most of which have a full time job with us.

I haven't see the olympus code base, AFAIK its not out, but I do not think it will totally run par with vBulletin 3.0.x, and not 3.5.0

phpBB is a free script and backed by a free community who devotes their time when possible.

vBulletin is a paid script backed by both a community of users who are also using the software, but also by a paid support team who is avaible near 24/7/365.

But in the end its really your call and your decision on what you think is best :)

O.K Zachery,
i agree with you .i tested the demo admin panel of vbulletin and olympus and found that vbulletin is much ahead of olympus.although the structure of phpbb is going to be changed (much like vbulletin) but it will always lag behind vbulletin because vbulletin is closed source so definetely it will have better security than phpbb.And everybody knows Security prevails.

vBulletin is not closed source, its visual, you can see, modify, edit the vBulletin code base how you want, but you need to pay for it.

by closed ,i meant that it is not available publicly.of course buyers can see the source.(if they won't see the code , then they will not buy the script).
well ,i advocate for phpbb but i myself will migrate to vbulletin finally.because there is no other option left,if you need a piece of mind.

In my experience with both phpBB and vBulletin, I find that I favour the latter. My forum originally started as a phpBB forum with a template and six months later, despite a tiny number of registered users, I bought vBulleting - I was tired of the low quantity of actions available in the phpBB Admin Menu and wanted more control over my forum.

With phpBB people can talk about how they can add in a hack but what's the use? The minute phpBB gets updated and you install the new version it all becomes a bit of a mess. With vBulleting the features that phpBB users want to hack are typically part of the product from the outset. I was able to use a bit of HTML to create a new BB code for my forum [GOOGLE] [/GOOGLE] in which you would put a word and a link to that search on Google appears. Simply done in the vBulletin Admin Menu; phpBB I would have had to hack.

Another feature of note is the Archive; phpBB doesn't have this.

The persistant security issues of PHPbb concern me. These forums seem to be readily hacked.

I also like the power and flexibility vBulletin has. I rarely see a PHPbb that loks as nice as a vBulletin can look. PHPbb forums generally look "stock".

Although there does exist those few PHPbb forums that both look as good, and are as secure as vBulletin, they certainly are few and far between. The reason for this is the skill level of the owner. If you're going to bring PHPbb up to par with vBulletin, then you've REALLY gotta know your PHP, and not to mention graphic design principles. The problem is that most people, even if they do possess the skil level required, then they already realize the advantage of starting with as good a foundation as they can get. Therefore, you'll find a lot of your more experienced webmasters going with vBulletin, just for the sake of simplicity.

I've been using YaBB SMF and as nice as it is, there are still a couple of things that it won't do that vBulletin will. I could fix them, but it would take me away from other aspects of my site that are far more pressing, so in the long run, I probably will switch to vBulletin as well...

Just a thought...

-Smitty

ok,
i surfed the net and found out that all the three great forum scripts are releasing a massive enchancement to their boards.PHPBB is working on olympus,ipb is working on ver.2.1, vbulletin is working on version 3.5 .
i tested all the three software and found out that phpbb is much behind and ,ipb and vbulletin are more or less similar.
but what impressed me that it has more administrative function than vbulletin and it has less licence fee than vbulletin and and also that the licence is perpetual.

so go for ipb. :lol:

vbulletin is working on version 3.5 .

v3.7 has been out for months.

v3.7 has been out for months.

that is not version 3.7 ,that is 3.0.7

I have a hair-brained Idea!:twisted:

All of us PHP/MySQL types should get together and create an alternative to PhpBB and VBulletin.

Ready when you are.
Jared

:mrgreen:

Heck man, I agree with you on that 1. You can count me in. However, How does the others feel and is this foreal? Creating a BB is way too easy. Just like making a shoutbox and then some.:cool:

I started with phpbb and transfered over to vbulletin in spite of having a tiny community.

The reason was inability to make the mods WORK, and yes, I KNOW about EasyMod..it AIN'T! Plus, I needed the cabaility of subforums and the mod for it didn't work either. I tried running it 5 times. Even WITH the coder's help...he was the only one who did try. When I tried to make EasyMod work, the guy who wrote it was off doing something else...

With vbulletin, I do get answers even if *I'M* the one making mistakes. Liz

A new forum software would be a good idea. I'm in if you guys wanna do it:)

for me personally, both softwares are great (phpbb and vbulletin).

no doubt, vbulletin has a lot more features and stability over phpbb because its cost a dollars($$$) to have it in short "its for sale" unlike in phpbb you can have it for free.

i use phpbb in my forums although it lacks admin management, im hoping for their next major release Olympus. and what i like most about phpbb is their template system and coding, very clean coded and flexible template system unlike in SMF.

and no one provide gaiaonline since technically it isnt phpbb anymore...

I know I'm responding to an old post, but since the thread as a whole is still getting replies, it seems fine to mention this.

Although Gaia Online has indeed modified the heck out of phpBB, they share their changes. At least, they share the big ones. There is a discussion among the admins of the hugest forums, here:

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=135383

And they share the phpBB improvements they have made. The opening post refers to a site that was getting 50,000 posts PER DAY. Who knows what it gets nowadays. That might be the Gaia guys. In any case, they share how they sped the thing up. Even though my boards are miniscule in comparison, I've learned a lot from skimming that thread and implementing the code changes.

So, this is to say that you shouldn't ignore Gaia as an example of phpBB, since any phpBB admin can read that thread, implement the changes, and end up with a forum that is pretty capable, traffic-wise.

-Tony

if vBulletin was not so expensive I would choose it

....

Yes, but vBulletin, Invision, wowBB, MyBB, wtcBB, any other board could scale that well with a proper 70~ some servers behind it.

The fact of the matter is, while Gaia Online does go though that much traffic a day, it does not prove that its a better forum by stock, it just proves that someone could make the code and invest the money to make it work the way they wanted it. phpBB by default does _not_ scale like that, no unmodified phpBB would run that efficently on 50~ some servers.

vBulletin 3.5 will scale very well on multiple servers (master / slave config which can be very finely tuned with stock features, even redirecting specific query sets to the right server) and has tons of cacheing options and disable buttons for some of the features.

Neither one is really better than the other without looking at all the aspects of the user who is asking "which forum software should I choose". And even then phpBB or vBulletin may not be the right choice, it might be invision, or MyBB, or even some unknown forum software.

Personally, I use vB, period, outside of testing.

Hi, I'm new to this board... I've used and seen a lot of different types of forums and here's what I think. Right now I use phpBB integramod with more mods i added on my site...
phpBB: Very easy to mod... Good ACP... Good user interface. Most security problems can be fixed with the phpSecurity mod.
VB and IPB: I don't like paying for a forum while I can get it free. Good clean interface....
SMF: Nice clean interface, lots of features, easy to mod- I'm considering it switching my main website to this.
MercuryBoard: Clean interface... not really that great.

That's all I can think of for now...

phpBB by default does _not_ scale like that, no unmodified phpBB would run that efficently on 50~ some servers.

That would be an interesting rebuttal to my point, if I had been talking about unmodified phpBB. The entire point of my post was that the Gaia modifications are available, so it is possible for anyone to have a modified phpBB that would run that efficiently. And since those modifications are freely available, my secondary point is that there really is no reason to talk about an unmodified phpBB. Every phpBB install can get high-end mods for free, so saying "unmodified phpBB can't scale" is sorta irrelevant. Anybody who cares about scaling will start with a base of phpBB + Gaia mods.

EDIT: Hmm, wait, I'll make a concession. If your point is that it requires effort to add the Gaia changes, I'll buy that. I'm just not sure how much that would detract from phpBB, because someone looking for a product that runs "efficently on 50~ some servers" would have to know what they're doing. You don't put someone with low/no skills on a clustered deployment. So I guess it's sort of a weird point -- the high-end work requires modifications, but the only people who would ever do high-end work would be those who are comfortable with modifications. At which point, the difference between phpBB and vBulletin -- at least in terms of scalability -- will look negligible to the person charged with deploying it.

-Tony