phpbb vs. vBulletin

[mibrahim]

Hi,

Can somebody highlight the features of vBulletin that are not provided by phpbb, or provide a link to page having that comparison ??

Thx.

[Onimua]

Here a link to all of vBulletin's feature (3.0.7): http://www.vbulletin.com/features.php

[Nirex]

What is there to deside?
vB:
Easy skin/template management.

phpBB:
Wtf is that anyway?(yes i know a forum i was being sarcastic cause it sucks)

[Mark.B]

Hi,

Can somebody highlight the features of vBulletin that are not provided by phpbb, or provide a link to page having that comparison ??

Thx.

The main one is the ability not to look like yet another silly teen board.

[Nirex]

The main one is the ability not to look like yet another silly teen board.

uh, what the hec are you talking about?

[steven s]

I found phpBB filled my needs for a few years. And I've seen some really nice phpBB boards out there. I say that because my vB boards are still using the default style. Back to phpBB vs vBulletin.

I found myself needing to add several hacks to phpBB to do what I needed. Then everytime there was an update I had to figure how to reinstall the hacks. Sometimes past hacks conflicted with the new software. Then I decided to move to vBulletin because of the ease of setting permissions and subforums. At first I thought vBulletin was bloated with many things I would never need but as I started using it I found several features very useful. Especially the paid subscriptions function. Importing from phpBB was easy. I didn't loose anything that I know about.

I think both are excellent programs in their own ways. Both I have had excellent support and found the online support community extremely helpful. With phpBB I was limited in what I could do because I was always looking at phpbbhacks.com In vBulletin it is all here and what is not can usually be found at vbulletin.org. I'm glad I made the switch although I think vBulletin is more demanding then phpBB on bandwidth.

[nemanjas]

Yup. Phpbb is quite good for it's price. Support is not that bad, so phpbb is a good starting point for new web/forum owners.

When community starts growing you'll find phpbb weak points in no time. phpbb will improve, but i'm not willing to wait for it.

Things that make my life hard with phpbb are:
1. no subforums (actually there are if you hack it, but upgrading phpbb with too many hacks is a time consuming job)
2. there is no ability to merge threads
3. No attachment support (i've added that hack, but as i said hacks are pain in the rear when upgrading)

[PageUp]

I started my forum with phpbb. After migrating to vB after two years, search engine traffic doubled in a few months. This alone is a deciding advantage of vB.

In case any dev reads this: make vB even more SE friendly. Dump some other features if you have to.

[ManagerJosh]

It's currently a complex balance to make sure we get the right amount of exposure. At the same time, we also don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot.

Assume that EVERY vBulletin owner updates his site, and estimating on how many vBulletin boards there are out there on the net, (at least 5404, but there's a ton more out there not listed on the vBulletin Links Directory) you basically are gonna end up flooding the search engines and they are just gonna revise their algorthiums and ignore the vBulletin SEOs.

That defeats the purpose! We may even loose exposure!

[PageUp]

SEs won't ignore vB forums, because there is too many of them and some are really popular and useful for the user.

Second, SEO isn't necessarily something bad. If it's done in a way that SEs more easily understand what the page is about, then what could be wrong with that? Right now, there are tons of links in vB forums that confuse SEs, different versions of the page with the same content, many URL versions for the same page, etc.

[ManagerJosh]

You aren't seeing my point. If all vBulletin boards had the new SEOs, it would literally flood search engines. Basically it becomes overwhelming. Plus don't forget competition loves to emulate designs.

Basically you'll have a million different boards with the new search engine optimization. How much optimization would that really be? Basically an algorthium would be rewritten to take that in account and put them in the rightful place.

This is simply spamming a search engine. Bombarding it with millions of boards with the same search engine technique...it doesn't help you or me in the long run. Short run, yes, long run. never.

[bennet]

i found one page compare phpbb vs vbulletin , may be help for us .

http://www.forummatrix.org/compare/phpBB+vBulletin

[steven s]

First post and it's to a 5 year old thread?

[svetoslav80]

i found one page compare phpbb vs vbulletin , may be help for us .

http://www.forummatrix.org/compare/phpBB+vBulletin

Thanks, that was useful

[Loco.M]

First post and it's to a 5 year old thread?

my thoughts exactly..