vBulletin - phpbb - Invision Board

**Domain** · 08-31-2002, 04:01 PM

Has anyone used:

vBulletin
phpbb
Invision Board

I understand vBulletin has a cost and I am not concerned about that.

From what I understand, more people seem to prefer vBulletin over phpbb. I am real curious if anyone has taken the time to compare Invision Board with vBulletin or actually use both and could elaborate about their experience with the two.

**NameBox** · 09-02-2002, 05:52 PM

I've used and installed both vBulletin and phpBB. Functionality is similar. For the money, vBulletin proves to be quite scalable (many sites have 100 times the active users that DnForum does), and worth the money given the support offered for the license fee.

Not open source, though, and the license is only good for 1 domain.

Downside, is lack of flexibility re: integration with your site. Therefore, little branding possibility or revenue generating potential (re: links, banners, etc.). Its too monoblock for me.

Personally, I like phpBB, but then again, I'm a real fan of open source development. Good luck.

**Domain** · 09-02-2002, 08:05 PM

Thanks for your feedback. I do like the idea of open source and am starting to lean towards phpbb again. Guess I'll install it and give it a go. I'll be setting up multiple sites with forums so perhaps its the best choice.

09-02-2002, 08:13 PM

my Hosting company giving free forum software
work just like vBulletin, I think

look demo http://www.domaintk.net/forum/

RotoHOST · 09-02-2002, 08:14 PM

Hi,
We've used and installed all 3 but prefer phpBB over the other two. The user community behind phpBB is second-to-none and the program itself is constantly being updated.
That said, if you are running a mission critical site/forum you won't go wrong with vB but for the average forum, phpBB can most likely fill your needs perfectly

**Domain** · 09-02-2002, 08:27 PM

Originally posted by RotoHOST
Hi,
We've used and installed all 3 but prefer phpBB over the other two. The user community behind phpBB is second-to-none and the program itself is constantly being updated.
That said, if you are running a mission critical site/forum you won't go wrong with vB but for the average forum, phpBB can most likely fill your needs perfectly

Will phpbb scale fairly large? Consider this board:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com

Could phpbb handle a board of that size?

The software will be installed on a (1 GHZ / 512mb ram / 20GB drive) dedicated server at rackspace with 30GB of data transfer

Thanks

Like the looks of your site by the way.

RotoHOST · 09-02-2002, 08:51 PM

I couldn't say with certainty whether phpBB would handle a site the size of WHT or not (though it most likely can) but here are 3 mid-sized phpBB-based forums doing quite nicely on shared servers.
http://forum.civic-si.com/
http://fishgeeks.com/forums/
http://www.onlinesurvivor.net/os/phpBB/index.php

And..thanks for the compliment!

**Who-Wiz** · 09-03-2002, 02:36 AM

Originally posted by NameBox
Downside, is lack of flexibility re: integration with your site. Therefore, little branding possibility or revenue generating potential (re: links, banners, etc.). Its too monoblock for me.

I wanted to chime in... I don't understand this statement.

vBulletin is very customizable, and has many options for links, banners, and revenue generation (and "theme support" for complete website integration). In fact, combined with options from Gossamer-Threads (like Links SQL and Gossamer Mail), it has lots of potential uses.

Also check out phpPortals.com for a content management solution integrated with vBulletin.

I like phpBB too, but I haven't persued them much as I bought vBulliten 2-3 years ago, back when UBB was the best game in town (quickly loosing ground to vb).

~ Dudley

**KING dot NET** · 09-13-2002, 07:11 AM

Originally posted by Domain

Will phpbb scale fairly large? Consider this board:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com

Could phpbb handle a board of that size?

The software will be installed on a (1 GHZ / 512mb ram / 20GB drive) dedicated server at rackspace with 30GB of data transfer

Thanks

Like the looks of your site by the way.

The phpbb.com has 25k members and comparable threads to WHT. Both of these forums uses MySQL, only differs on user web interface.

I go for phpBB forum board and my alternative is XForum.

**Fearless** · 09-13-2002, 07:45 AM

I tried all 3. I settled on phpbb.

**KING dot NET** · 09-13-2002, 08:02 AM

Me too ... and finally decided to use phpbb mods for postnuke now runs in www.XForum.NET site.

**NameBox** · 09-13-2002, 09:59 AM

Originally posted by TheWatcher
Me too ... and finally decided to use phpbb mods for postnuke now runs in www.XForum.NET site.

Didn't the latest phpBB postnuke mod have some stablity problems?

Like the integration with the CMS though. Allows you to better frame a board, possibly increasing the revenue possibilities (if that's a concern).

Good luck with your site.

**KING dot NET** · 09-13-2002, 10:05 AM

Originally posted by NameBox

Didn't the latest phpBB postnuke mod have some stablity problems?

Like the integration with the CMS though. Allows you to better frame a board, possibly increasing the revenue possibilities (if that's a concern).

Good luck with your site.

The integration went ok, no problem when I did the installation. Maybe because I know postnuke routine and a little bit of phpbb.

Regarding stability, I can't really answer it at this point. My members/visitors in www.XForum.NET (www.needguide.com) haven't use it for a while unlike the previous forum (xforum by trollix).

Anyways, I will keep you posted just in case I come to that point.

Thanks for head up.

Cheers,
TheWatcher.

**slogandomains** · 10-03-2002, 06:19 AM

Originally posted by Domain

Will phpbb scale fairly large? Consider this board:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com

Could phpbb handle a board of that size?

The software will be installed on a (1 GHZ / 512mb ram / 20GB drive) dedicated server at rackspace with 30GB of data transfer

Thanks

Like the looks of your site by the way.

Just so you know, Web Hosting Talk could not run on the system you are describing either. That will be fine for beginning it and developing it, but if you become anything like WHT, you will need more bandwidth, memory, and processing power.

**NameBox** · 10-03-2002, 12:56 PM

Originally posted by slogandomains

Just so you know, Web Hosting Talk could not run on the system you are describing either. That will be fine for beginning it and developing it, but if you become anything like WHT, you will need more bandwidth, memory, and processing power.

Are you talking about limitations specific to phpBB or the hardware?

RotoHOST · 10-03-2002, 01:02 PM

Originally posted by NameBox

Are you talking about limitations specific to phpBB or the hardware?

Most likely, he was referring to hardware. A heavily traveled board such as WHT uses up a lot of ram and cpu time. At least 1 gig of ram on a dual cpu system would be preferable. However, for starting out, a single cpu, 512mb ram would suffice.

**DotComster** · 10-03-2002, 01:39 PM

I use vBulletin, phpbb, Invision Board and others - can't tell the diference sometimes

**RMF** · 10-04-2002, 12:37 AM

I'm a little new to the forum world. Which board do you guys think offers the most security against hackers and such?.

RMF

**DotComster** · 10-04-2002, 09:19 AM

Originally posted by RMF
I'm a little new to the forum world. Which board do you guys think offers the most security against hackers and such?.

RMF

That is a different question - not vB, that's for sure. That is just because it is so popular that crackers concentrate on it's security. It's best to keep aware of security upgrades on any forum you chose.

**drbiohealth** · 10-05-2002, 08:43 PM

Can anybody suggest how to customize phpbb. How to have your own look and feel, say pasting advertisement and other images on various pages?? They don't seem to have any option for this in their configuration panel.

Thanks