Do your sale magic: Why should I change?

[Busterbunny]

Hi there,

I currently own a forum based on PHPbb 3.07 PL1. I didn't mind it that much until recently, when a change on my host (passing from PHP4 to PHP5) caused an annoying problem. There is surely a simple solution to my problem, but the lack of response from communities supporting PHPbb is distressing at best.

I figure I have two options.

Option A) Keep the PHPbb forum, 792362 messages, 35628 topics and roughly 100 active users (1000 registered), and spit out 300$ for a friend of mine to take a look at the forum and solve the current problem.

Option B) Buy vBulletin for the same price. I've been a moderator on the Paradox Entertainment forums, and they didn't seem to struggle so much with their vBulletin forum. And I figure that if I do pay for this product, I will get some support.

I'm very tempted to go for option B). But I need some killer arguments for me, and for my users.

My questions:

- What are some very cool features that aren't available in PHPbb's latest version, but are available in your version? Both from a user and an owner/moderator perspective? Perhaps there's a post about that on the forums here, but I haven't found it yet.

- How old is the current main version (vBulletin 4)? And how long will it stay the current main version?

- Running the test, I'm being told that "magic_quotes_gpc should be off for optimal performance, ask your host to change this in php.ini" Is that a very big problem?

Thanks!

[we_are_borg]

1. For me Blog, CMS Solcial Groups but that one needs a overhaul. Other would say different things but it can be a liitle or a big thing.
2. vBulletin 4 is 1 year old in December
3. No the impact on performance should be minimum.

[Zachery]

I think customers who've used both would be better off anwsering the cool features, though off the top of my head the Product & Plugin system more or less removes the need to edit files for modifciations. Plus I would still guess vBulletin has more features out of the box compared to phpbb.

vBulletin 4 has been out since December, we're coming up on our first revision to vBulletin 4 in the near future. I am not privy to any dates to future verisons (5.x, 6.x etc) so not soon is the best anwser I can give you.


No, it won't hurt anything, you'd see the tiniest preformance improvement by turning it off.

I would suggest you give our demo a try and see what you think of the product for yourself.

[Mark.B]

I would have to say, and I mean no disrespect to phpBB, but vBulletin 4, despite having had some, err, teething problems, is a far superior product and there's a major release coming soon with 4.1. In your situation I'd go with vBulletin every time.