vBulletin vs WWWThreads

[kurt]

Hello there,

I am a bulletin board newbie and I have been searching for a suitable discussion server package for a looooonnnnggg time.

I was so glad to finally find this site after I saw vBulletin mentioned in a 3 year old product review on a rather obscure website.

I am frankly amazed that it is such a nice product from what I can tell so far and yet it doesn't appear anywhere in the reviews of such software by people like PC Magazine etc.

in my opinion all of the other ones like webcrossing, webboard etc are overpriced and inferior products. I would have likely been using a package like vBulletin long ago if I had known it existed.

I have downloaded and installed the test site vBulletin lite that is available to try out.

It wasn't terribly easy to install all of the bits and pieces necessary to make it work but I did muddle through it.

unlike most of you I am not a web programmer although we do have one on staff but he's quite busy on customer projects right now.

so I'm spearheading this project to acquire a topflight discussion server package that we can easily integrate within our website environment.

I have narrowed down my review to just 2 products, vBulletin and WWWThreads.

I am at the point of wanting to make a purchasing decision right away since we are planning to launch a board that we expect will become quite popular in our industry.

at this point I have 2 main questions for those of you who are more familiar with these products than I:

1. I would like to know in your opinion the main advantages of vBulletin over WWWThreads (W3T).

in my limited view it seems they are almost identical except that W3T offers a threaded mode and vBulletin only offers a linear, or flat, message view.

at this point I am leaning more towards W3T but vBulletin was the initial product I found and I like the look and feel of the sister site to this one running vBulletin, VB Q & A forum.

2. I would like to know how easy it is for us to obtain the add-on's, enhancements, or "hacks" as I think you call them that provide the advanced functionality of your VB Q & A forum site. I want to know if this is something that is easy for me to do as a business type or whether it will require our web developer to do it.

thank you for your help and keep up the good work.

Kurt

[Martin]

I think that both are very good choices for a BBS system. They both have very active core communities, they are both easily and often "hacked" to provide extra features.

I haven't been to W3T's board in a while, but I was there a lot before finally deciding on vB as my system. At the time vB was brand new and W3T had been around quite a while. Rick is definitely a nice guy and listens to the wants and needs of his community.

I went with vB because I like the way PHP is progressing as a "must have" scripting engine on the web. It's fast, clean and generally lower overhead than a PERL script performing the same function.
I like the look and feel of this a lot better than I like the look and feel of W3T.

I think they both have features the other doesn't, but the most important to me, and I do not know if this has been changed, is that most of the admin changes to be made in W3T had to be hardcoded in, whereas vB has an admin control panel that give control over almost every aspect of the core program.

[werehere]

I also have not reviewed wwwthreads for a little while, but last I checked it only had a few cutomizations available through the templates or includes. Vbulletin is totally template driven, and I don't think that wwwthreads can match that at this time.

Maybe someone that knows there latest release better can verify that for me! ;)

[kurt]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Martin [/i]
[B]I think that both are very good choices for a BBS system. They both have very active core communities, they are both easily and often "hacked" to provide extra features.[/B][/QUOTE]

great, that's good to know.

[QUOTE][B]
I went with vB because I like the way PHP is progressing as a "must have" scripting engine on the web. It's fast, clean and generally lower overhead than a PERL script performing the same function.
I like the look and feel of this a lot better than I like the look and feel of W3T.[/B][/QUOTE]

hmm, W3T has a PHP version too now. from your comment they must not have had one when you were looking.

[QUOTE][B]I think they both have features the other doesn't, but the most important to me, and I do not know if this has been changed, is that most of the admin changes to be made in W3T had to be hardcoded in, whereas vB has an admin control panel that give control over almost every aspect of the core program. [/B][/QUOTE]

you may have a point here. scream mentioned he is currently working on improving that area right now.

ease of use is important to us.

thanks,

KC

[kurt]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by werehere [/i]
[B]I also have not reviewed wwwthreads for a little while, but last I checked it only had a few cutomizations available through the templates or includes. Vbulletin is totally template driven, and I don't think that wwwthreads can match that at this time.

Maybe someone that knows there latest release better can verify that for me! ;) [/B][/QUOTE]

you may have a good point.

I think the only reason I'm still leaning more towards W3T is due to the threading they offer. this to me is such a basic need in messaging that I'm just amazed it is not a native part of vB.

I have read the postings on this subject and I understand its coming but I just don't see how a non-technical user can intelligently follow a thread when multiple people are resonding to different sections of it . otherwise all you have is one string of replies which are probably out of sequence.

[Freddie Bingham]

kurt have you used a non-threaded forum very much?

I think you will find the majority of users prefer messages *this* way and get confused by a threaded view.

[YellowKard]

Ya, I've heard people who havn't used a disscussion style board before say threaded is so much easier...

...right before they try it out :)

[kurt]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by freddie [/i]
[B]kurt have you used a non-threaded forum very much?

I think you will find the majority of users prefer messages *this* way and get confused by a threaded view. [/B][/QUOTE]

much is a relative term.

prior to last week, no.

this past 7 days. yes a lot more.

and I can honestly say that I don't understand why you folks so staunchly defend the flat model. I find it very inferior to a threaded model like WWWThreads has. However, I prefer the rest of the look and feel of vB.

you should check it out and see what I'm talking about. I have found that I like switching back and forth between the two, using threaded mode for efficient navigation and flat mode for reading and responding.

this reply is a good example. it took a bit of extra navigation to respond to each of you in turn and the flat model gives me no sense of who is responding to what comment since its a purely linear discussion.

I just don't want our soon-to-be-launched site to be difficult for our non technical audience to use.

they are all used to threaded only boards that are really basic so this will be something they will expect so they can follow message threads.

thanks,

KC

[YellowKard]

Discussion (aka Linear aka Flat) style BBS's are a lot more organized, easier to read, and quicker then its threaded friend. Reasons for this are as follows:[list] [*] The topics are listed plain and simple[*] You click on the topic that intrests you[*] You read what everyone has to say like it is an accual conversation, allowing much easier communication and understandability[/list]
While it's threaded friend was the first BBS style, it is much messier and unorganized by throwing tons of text everywhere on your page, making it hard to pick out a certain topic you would like info on, you have to constantly click to read what everyone has to say, it's pure and underly pointless when you can take higher technology and display all the information on the same page!

Thank you for reading my incite on threaded and discussion styles.

[werehere]

kurt,

You will find that most people that like threaded views do not like flat, and visa versa!

I find it hard to believe that people actually defend the use of threaded, as I personaly hate using it. I know that is completely different from your point of view, but that is my opinion. You see, it is personal preferrence.

I also think you will find that people converting from the UBB (a lot of the users here, including myself) have members that are used to the flat mode, and would confuse their members in many cases with the threaded view! ;)

[Wayne Luke]

I find flat vs. threaded to be as much a debate as IE vs. Netscape or Windows vs. Linux.

Meaning it is mainly based upon opinion. Even more so, the less technologically inclined the person is, the more likely they are going to choose the first option on each choice. So which model you choose depends largely on your audience. I used to frequent threaded discussion boards and always thought there should be a better way. Have to click on many different tangents to try and get all views on a question is really time consuming.

I personally felt it was unnatural. To use an analogy, it is like asking a question to a room full of people then taking each of them into a separate room to get the answer instead of just talking in the same room.

[chrispadfield10]

i have also found that people who like the threaded view option will tend to use newsgroups unless there is a specific reason not to.

My choice (not as an admin but as a user) is definitely vbulletin. I used about 5 or 6 vbulletin boards, regularly, half a dozen UBB boards not so regularly and 1 WWW threads board regularly and that is the one at [url]www.gossamer-threads.com.[/url] Personally i don't like it at all, the threading is confusing, people get insulted when people reply to them particularly and in fact they are replying to the thread in general (do you always want to reply to just one post???), it confuses newbies who don't really understand how threading works and also the templates are just no where near as nice. This is as a user.

As an admin, i don't know. I find vbulletin very easy to do what i want and can even edit the code, i had never done any programming before coming here and php and mysql are so easy to do. Yes, wwwthreads can do it now but without knowing the source code i don't know.

Lastly the community over here is just about perfect, i am sure the wwwthreads one is good but i doubt "as good" :).

Vbulletin all the way.

[JB007]

WWWThreads is a very good product. It's good to provide an option for threaded/flat mode pages in the Control Panel although most of the users will prefer flat mode.

DCForum, WWWThreads, UltraBoard, vBulletin and IkonBoard are all good products because their programmers listen to the suggestions and opinions of their customers unlike UBB.

[werehere]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by JB007 [/i]
[B]WWWThreads is a very good product. It's good to provide an option for threaded/flat mode pages in the Control Panel although most of the users will prefer flat mode.

DCForum, WWWThreads, UltraBoard, vBulletin and IkonBoard are all good products because their programmers listen to the suggestions and opinions of their customers unlike UBB. [/B][/QUOTE]

I have to agree with this statement, and would like to see this as a possible future feature for vbulletin.

But the fact remains that it is not. So if that is the feature you are looking for at this time, maybe wwwthreads is your best bet. If you can live with the flat layout, then there is nothing better than vbulletin in my mind! ;)

[WebStyles]

I just want to say that I'm extremely technical, and still haven't figured out how to use a threaded style message board. I've always just left when I see them.