Hemebond on 24/9/2003 at 21:19
Just curious about whether or not there was a reason vBulletin was chosen and whether or not the TTLG team had thought about switching to phpBB. It's free you know.
Gingerbread Man on 24/9/2003 at 21:44
I think David told me the other day that the PCGamer forums had collapsed under their own weight, and that they ran phpBB.
Other than that, it's mostly a question of support, power, speed, etc. We considered all available forum software, and phpBB didn't suit our needs.
"Free" isn't usually an important consideration when you need software to perform well, for a long time, and under heavy load. In fact, most of the time "free" is a red flag.
TheOutrider on 25/9/2003 at 04:13
Also, vBulletin has those nice dot icons that show threads you've posted in. I have yet to find any other forums software that has those, and I love'em. :]
vBulletin's search is a PITA though when you try to work it into mozilla's search (where it doesn't work at all, bloody POST forms) or the search sidebar some guy from my clan made for IE-based browsers (because it still seems to do weird things even if you have a sidebar that can do POST searches).
On the other hand, concerning "free being a red flag", it is also important to note that, if bugs come up, you can go and fix them yourself with opensource software. Doesn't quite work with closed-source programs. Plus, software being free doesn't mean the support is crap. I've seen opensource developers jump at bugs I reported within minutes and having them fixed half an hour later.
Ultimately, I'd guess it's a matter of personal preference. I'm in lots of forums running phpBB, also larger ones, that without a single exception work just fine.
David on 25/9/2003 at 05:09
Yeah, PCGamer UK used phpbb for about 18 months. While they weren't as busy as TTLG overall, they had busier points as it was a british forum, so it was quite busy at british peak times. Anyhoo, during the last three of four months it started collapsing, with replies getting posted as new threads, posts getting put in the wrong etc
I "run" a phpbb forum on my website (although I'm going to delete it) and it just is nowwhere near as feature rich as vbulletin.
The Watcher on 25/9/2003 at 14:22
I visit a few forums that use phpBB and, while it works fine for the quieter ones, the busy ones end up having no end of trouble. A good one that I've seen on one of them recently is that the page links for very busy threads start to get completely out of step with the thread (so you end up looking at page 21 of 19 pages for example). Strikes me as being fine for most places but with a habit to go flakey under heavy stress...
On a not unconnected topic, which database does TTLG use as a backend for these forums?
David on 25/9/2003 at 14:25
The only database VBulletin supports is MySQL.
ignatios on 25/9/2003 at 16:07
:|
Hopefully that will be fixed in later versions; MySQL is nowhere near Postgres. Thankfully the new version handles transactions properly; what version is TTLG running?
Wow, bad sentences ahoy.
MsLedd on 26/9/2003 at 13:04
You know, I actually thought PHPbb was basically a scaled-down clone of vBulletin, you know essentially the same with some differences and fewer features ... until today. My hubby is setting up a website and wanted forums, so we installed PHPbb on the site.
OHMYGOD - it has NOTHING! It is a bare-bones poor-ass excuse for a BB system compared to vB - BLAH!!!!
Soul Reaper on 27/9/2003 at 03:57
What about Invision Power Board? It's some pretty good FREE software. Especially the latest 1.2 version. :thumb:
doctorfrog on 27/9/2003 at 06:22
Anything that supports RSS would be sweet.
He said wistfully.
