Import features

[marek]

I am currently using Tforum on my site ( http://titan.spaceports.com/~typus/tforum/ ), a very simple PHP/MySQL based program. I am thinking of buying vBulletin because it has so many more features. However, will it be possible to import the messages of my current forum into vBulletin?

[thetakerfan]

no, the only forum software that can currently be imported is UBB.
I think someone may have completed a Board Power import

[thetakerfan]

also, tForum is fairly new software, so I doubt there will be many users who have ever used it. So I don't think an import script will be made anytime soon.
What is the URL to your board?

[chrispadfield]

hehe another freeware board. I just wish all these excellent writers/coders would get together to make one amazing board instead of the 25 good but not brilliant ones that are there! :)

[thetakerfan]

I don't know how many times I've thought about this. If they all got together, they could probably make something that could really compete with the pay products
and the best part is that all these free boards are open source and all that, so why don't they all just work together to make one BIG, AWESOME board?
What I came up with, is that most of these people really are in it for the profit, no matter what they say now, they know that someday, if they make it good enough and get enough work from other people who really are in it for nothing, they can turn around and start selling it, just like UltraBoard did.
Its a shame though

[TWTCommish]

I've even got a totally crappy board in the works...LOL...got sick of it though, might not finish it.

[thetakerfan]

Board Power is the best example of a group effort, they have different people working together to create CGI Flat File, CGI MySQL, and PHP MySQL versions of the board.
Now, if any of them ever have all the features and speed that vB has, they would actually have a good shot of surviving
I wonder how many free boards I've seen start up and then just disappear

[chrispadfield]

Well on the boardpower issue, i can tell you exactly how that works.

The guy that owns the place http://www.thewebmasterforums.com made it free (i think to encourage people to visit his site and but the other stuff which is fair enough). It was a really great board and lots of people making mods for it but then he sort of stopped new releases (when it needed them) and would not include mods that others had made and even went to the extent to replicate stuff that someone had already made and better.

In the end this all changed when a lovely little hacker found a nice big security hole in the software and basically recked quite a few boards. The author did nothing about this and released not update which annoyed a few people. Fortuntly one of the people with a good board solved it and posted an update.

Then the author (joseph bannon) decided to go to mySQL. He just dropped the flat file board (without even the security patch being released) and went for mySQL. The board is horribly bugged and really not good at the moment. A lot less features than the flat file one had.

In the end, as lots of people there could not run mySQL one of the people making mods for the sites and the creater of http://www.bphacking.com decided to continue the flat file board. He has added loads of hacks, made it stable and it seems to be doing really well. Probably one of the best flat file boards out there I would think.

So that is the story of boardpower! It seems that a php version is in the works but not sure who is going to create it. Joseph Bannon does not know php i don't think so i guess it is not him.

But yeah, if you added all those open source boards together wow it would be good. (with regular updates as well.. hehe).

[thetakerfan]

I didn't know all that had happened. I had installed it way back, when it was still Big Talker, and thought it sucked. Lacked many features, pain to setup, worse to customize. I thought they were still working on the Flat File system, I don't know, I just looked at the PHP version. Its not the same guy, is username is VSJay or something like that. He said he is trying for a november beta release, we'll see, I highly doubt it'll happen