Why vb?

[komal]

My friend works with it, and he said it's decent. Up until now, I've used phpbb, and invision, both work well. I hear a comment in this forum about how far ahead of other boards 2.3.2 is. How so? I am wondering if it is worth buying, I'm not going to buy a beta because 2.3.2 is fairly new and it already has a ton of things that need to be changed to make it secure. So, what's so much better about vb?

[phill2003]

well only you can decide if vb is right for you. its your money.....

[komal]

I look at the feature list, past the exaggerations, and I see nothing that is very new. What makes THIS bulletin bord worth paying for? With products like invision and phpbb for free?

[Scott MacVicar]

vBulletin 2 when first released 2 years ago everything there was the newest thing available. Other boards are in the process of playing catch up such as phpBB2.2 will rival vB2 features and Invision are in the process of catching up with vB2.

vB3 the new product will introduce all the new features that will set us apart from other boards.

[komal]

Ok, what kind of features will be unique to vb3 when it is released? But that posts sounds like an admission that vb 2.3.2 isn't that great compared to other boards.

[Wayne Luke]

vB 2.3.2 was a bug release. We don't add new features on minor releases. The post above says nothing about the "greatness" of vB2.X, other than the fact that the competitors listed are trying to emulate it. vBulletin's strength comes from that fact that it is more stable, more scalable and more customizable than phpBB.

[Steve Machol]

Here is a partial list of the feature set in vB3:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=51821

As for vB2 not being 'that great' compared to the other boards, I don't believe anyone was making that admission. The fact is that competitive products keep adding features to try and catch up to the competition. That's the nature of the world and that is happening with vB2. However this is not too surprising since we stopped developing the vB2 series quite a while ago to concentrate of vB3.

In the end only you can decide if the features in vB3 and the excellent support available from Jelsoft are worth the price to you (obviously I'm biased in that last statement.) If not, then you have other options as you've noted. :)

[squall14716]

Let me put it this way. After a while of playing with vB3, vB2 seems like crap. After playing with phpBB or Invision, vB2 seems like it's the best BBS out there.

Or at least that's how I feel.

[Radon3k]

Also keep this in mind: How easy is it to customize the phpBB2 or IPB look from the default look? Not very easy, especially when compared with vBulletin v2 and vBulletin v3 makes it even more easy.

[komal]

That list of features mentions many things other boards already have. I was wondering about one feature, it's one I would need if I were to use vb, does vb 2.3.2 not support password protected forums? I usually keep one for certain people, seperate from others. It's listed on the feature list of vb3, so then it's not possible in vb 2.3.2?

[Radon3k]

It is possible but requires hacking the code as it's not a standard feature in vBulletin v2. The hacking community is located over at vBulletin.org (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/).

[Vile]

That list of features mentions many things other boards already have. I was wondering about one feature, it's one I would need if I were to use vb, does vb 2.3.2 not support password protected forums? I usually keep one for certain people, seperate from others. It's listed on the feature list of vb3, so then it's not possible in vb 2.3.2?


Correct. By default vB 2x does not have this option, but the hack is very simple & easy to install.

[Wayne Luke]

That list of features mentions many things other boards already have. I was wondering about one feature, it's one I would need if I were to use vb, does vb 2.3.2 not support password protected forums? I usually keep one for certain people, seperate from others. It's listed on the feature list of vb3, so then it's not possible in vb 2.3.2?
vB 2.3.2 does not. vB3 does.

However using usergroups, you can do what you do now with passwords and it is more secure since user's can't share the password of the forums and let their buddies in.

[dreamerzrealm]

I have used both boards. They are both great, but vbulletin is far more superior. I especially think this because I have had a chance to work with vb3. I don't know anything that you can't do with this product.

Customizing those other boards are a total pain in the ass. Vbulletin makes it so much easier, and you get far better support from vbulletin then you do phpbb or invision.

[komal]

Yeah, so vb 2.3.2 isn't really worth it, but vb3 might be, so I'll see how good it is when it comes out of it's beta stage.

[assassingod]

Yeah, so vb 2.3.2 isn't really worth it, but vb3 might be, so I'll see how good it is when it comes out of it's beta stage.
vB2 can be worth it if you check out all the vB3-like hacks there.

[Stryker]

Reliability is the secret ingredient for me. All the other boards I tried before vB (YABB, Ikonboard etc) kept dying on me and taking the database (or flat files) with them roughly every three months. I kept having to make announcements to say "I'm very sorry but you'll have to register again. Oh and we've lost all the posts as well so we'll have to start from scratch there too". I've had the odd minor problem to fix with vB, but nothing disasterous like before. The database has always remained in tact. That alone is a deal clincher if you ask me.

[boutwell]

Komal if you would like, I can let you take a look around the admin section of my Dev. board. It's VB3 but it will let you kick the tires before you buy.

I own 2 VB licenses and use Invision for my sites that do not want to pay for licenses. I highly reccomend VB over all others...their template system is second to none, attachments are a breeze, and their custom profile fields are absoultely top notch. Those three features are what sells me.

[komal]

That's very nice of you bout, but no thanks. I think Ikonboard is very powerful, PHPBB and Invision are both good, but, I'll admit, I was surprised by how easy it was to change the colors of the board in the admin screen, which is why I'll probably buy VB3. I've used PHPBB and Invision on my old sites, creating new schemes and templates was always the most annoying part.

[mccollin]

I just completed a move from phpBB to vB 2.3 and I think I've died and gone to heaven. I had a heavily modifed phpBB with lots of portal type pages being fed from phpBB as a CMS. I was back a few levels and dreaded the update. I also had done a PDA version which ivolved essentially a whole new set of php files (there may have been an easier way to do it with phpBB templates, but I never understood them... and you ended up with a lot of files to duplicate and maintain). My motivation for doing vB was partly the issue with a dot release migration being a big deal, and more importantly I aquired a site that ran on vB and I was going to be forced to switch one side or the other.

Why am I happy? Here are a few reasons.

Once you figure out the templating sytem of vB, and it isn't that hard to figure out, you can do some amazing things. I didn't fully appreciate this until I installed vbIndex, a portal page add-on. You can nest the templates and get a lot of reuse out of your html code. This was much tougher in phpBB, with a similar portal page add-on. I had a ton of repetitive code with phpBB... so a single change to a creative could require me to change 20 template files, upload them, test, repeat. This is much better... HUGE.

Co-branding is something I just discovered. Because you can pass a style in the url, and it will stick, you can setup multiple brands for your site. I have a site that hard links to one of my forums. I am going to make their day when I tell them to add a stylid to the url in their link and they see a forum with their site logo and their color pattern! This is simple to do in vB. All in the admin control panel.

Backups are easier, playing on what I just mentioned. You change your creative (templates) much more often than your php code with vB. And, your attachments are in the database. This means a single db backup will grab everything most of the time. With phpBB, you had to backup your files everynight too, because the attachments weren't in the database, or you might have tweaked a template.

I didn't do an official test, but I have doubled the size of my user base and traffic since the move, and the performance is better. Same server...dedicated 2.1 Ghz, 1G memory. It is noticably better... better response time and snapper page loads. phpBB was cleary contributing to this, but it also could have been the fact that I had more code to write which might not have been as efficient. Whatever, it's better now.