Forum Moderators: rogerd
Which type of forum (e.g. IPB, vBulletin, SMF, phpBB do you use) and why?
I use SMF (simple machines forum) because it is free.
It has all the features of phpBB and most of the features from IPB and VB. It is also fast and secure.
Just take Internet Explorer for example.
Thats not a reflection of the "best" software, just the most popular.
YaBB (cgi version)
- Nice, lightweight software, easy to hack (from the admin side) into doing what you want it too. Bazillions of skins out there and lots of mods available. Well known security issues that are easy to fix and stay on top off. There was a time in the history of the net that YaBB was THE forum software.
Me Likey Perl.
phpBB - (Standalone + Portal Plugin versions)
- What I use when I make the mistake of letting the domain owners decide what kind of system they want me to implement. Sure, there are lots of skins and mods out there for it, and its ubiquity makes it easy for most users to use (because they're familiar with it), but I'm just not a fan. phpBB boards just seem to take up too much of my time from an admin standpoint.
Me No Likey php (the language).
Anecdotal:
php is "the sex" of web languages right now. CGI/Perl is old school fuddy duddy.
A close friend is a researcher for (un-named "big three" security/antivirus company), who maintains several servers for hosting on the side. If I'm using his servers, I use YaBB, because he refuses to install the php mods on his servers. php has a wickedly large number of undisclosed security issues that are, cumulatively, a ticking time bomb on the net.
I now use Eblah, which I think is great :)
Why does webmasterworld work? - simplicity, readability. Go for vbulletin and you're landed with awful smilicons to switch off (unless you want to treat your visitors like 11-year-olds), styling features that no-one really needs etc etc.
They may all be options, but it's like with OScommerce - you end up switching so many things off because they're not quite right you wonder why you're bothering at all with this bloated old monster.
But now punbb! That's the business for me: lean, efficient, modifiable in house. What I call a bulletin board. But others will hate it for the very lack of features I applaud.
Conclusion: there's no single magic solution, but a range of possible answers according to your needs...
WebmasterWorld is CGI/Perl, and I'm going to assume Brett is a pretty wicked Perl Hack.
Others are oriented more to PHP, or dotNet.
Your language of choice is going to play a HUGE role in what software you use, especially if you planning on modding it to any degree.
And vBulletin is apparently quite a resource hog from the horror stories I've heard.
Needless to say, we use some obscure perl based software, heavily modded, but still lacking many of the features of the more established boards.
Not sure, if we made the right decision.
It's pretty clear that Perl-based BestBBS can handle traffic more efficiently than any commercial forum package, but I think a lot of the difference is in the coding rather than an inherent limitation of the language. Commercial software is under a lot of pressure to add features. Users demand them, plus the software firm needs to justify periodic major releases. Over the years, this leads to very feature-rich but somewhat bloated software.
I'm not interested in writing code or hacks so php is not an issue for me. There are many options that you can turn off, but then this is mainly done via your browser and tick-boxes in admin mode rather than editing the raw php code. Then again options - that's a good thing isn't it?
