Forum Moderators: rogerd
With this in mind, could someone please help with the following :
a) How hard is the mod rewrite to phpBB? And if I do change it, will it be as search engine friendly as VBulletin?
b) If I purchase VBulletin on a years licence, and that year passes, how do they know if I am still using it? (I'm not going to do this, just wondering)
c) If I purchase VBulletin and use it on more than one site, how would they know? (I'm not going to do this, just wondering)
d) What is the best way to find out if the search engines are spidering your forum?
Thanks
I wouldn't count on big income from a forum, at least in the near term. :)
As far as Jelsoft knowing about your vBB install(s), I think vBulletin "phones home" since the admin panel displays whether the version you are running is the most recent; it alerts you if a new version is out (not a bad thing when one sees other fora getting hacked because not all admins upgraded their forum).
The approach to making the forums search-engine friendly is a bit different between the two products. The mod rewrite approach of phpBB is designed to make the forum page URLs friendly. I don't think the mod rewrite coding is a big deal, but I assume you'll need to modify templates as well, so that the links all use the preferred URLs.
vBulletin has taken a different path in the 3.x version - they have created an "archive" with friendly URLs but also without all of the bloat of a typical vBB forum page. I.e., the archive pages have only the link and text content; they don't have all the bells & whistles, edit/report links, posting links, profile stuff, headers & footers, icon legends, etc. - just pure breadcrumb nav links, thread titles, and text. These archive pages are lean; you can add content to them, of course.
It remains to be seen how this approach will play out in search engines. I haven't done any quantitative research, but on vBBs that have been up for a while with the archive in place I'm seeing the archive pages usually outranking the untweaked "regular" pages. On the downside, visitors are taken to the archive page rather than the actual forum page; plus, from a linkage standpoint, the regular forum pages are much more likely to draw external links than archive pages. I'm currently running some tests with enhanced internal archive linkage, but it's too soon to tell what the impact will be.
Once it got busy, I switched to VBulletin which I like much better, seems I need less mods to make the forum behave the way I want it to.
Haven't had to upgrade VBulletin yet, but since I haven't installed too many mods, i'm sure it will be easier than PhpBB.
a) How hard is the mod rewrite to phpBB? And if I do change it, will it be as search engine friendly as VBulletin?
b) If I purchase VBulletin on a years licence, and that year passes, how do they know if I am still using it?
They have 2 ways of knowing:
1) It "calls home" to check for updates when you enter the admin panel.
2) Someone at Jelsoft visits your site to check your not still using it after your expiry date if you dont renew your license. (yes, they do know when your expiry date is).
If I purchase VBulletin and use it on more than one site, how would they know?
d) What is the best way to find out if the search engines are spidering your forum?
One of you mentioned that you are migrating and I'd be very curious to know how that is working out for you. It may also be helpful for PumpkinHead to know what he is in for if he decides to start with phpbb but ends up wanting to migrate.
[edited by: rogerd at 7:20 pm (utc) on Jan. 6, 2005]
[edit reason] No specifics/URLs, please... [/edit]
Thats my 2 cents.
- One of the reasons I upgraded was due to server load problems. I've had phpBB bring the server down under some pretty poor tests - 300 active users, or even 20-30 users playing a game that involves frantically posting to the site. A week after the conversion we had a peak time that saw 600 extremely active (posting and viewing) users online at once for an afternoon. vbulletin didn't flinch, and the server didn't slow. I'd have been offline with phpBB. This was the single biggest reason I moved, and it's held up.
- the actual conversion took a bit. Not all the posts came over perfectly, avatars didn't make it, some small headaches like that. Much of it probably just do to garbage in the data. I had to convert 2 or three times, and it finally took quite a few hours to convert that big of a database. Had to increase the script size in my php.ini file from 8m to 32m, stuff like that. Headaches, but it's all one up stuff.
- admining the site is a dream compared to phpBB. I don't think I'm going to have to worry about all my customizations every time I upgrade versions. Template mods are far easier to make and maintain.
- the moderators are real happy to. I don't moderate so I can't personally tell the difference.
- out of the box it's got more features for users. Most of our visitors are liking the new features.
Moving a forum that large (800,000+ posts) took a bit of time and we're still going through some pains. But all in all, I'm very glad I made the move.
Wow, that sounds like a good way to stress-test your forum. Congrats on the conversion, glad it went well. It's interesting that vBB seemed to handle the high load without an issue. I've found vBB to be quite resource intensive, although it's very solid until your server hits the wall.
I think the need for minimal hacks should be a key factor in any forum software decision. Since the needs of each forum are different, I'd recommend compiling a must-have feature list and reviewing available packages to see which ones do the most without modification. Whether you are applying hacks written by others or modifying code yourself, the changes will come back to haunt you when it's time to upgrade.
