V-Bulletin or UBB?

[Jefferey Grimes]

Which is the better message board script and why?

[filburt1]

vBulletin, in my opinion (that's what this site is using). The main advantages of vB over UBB are speed (vB uses only a MySQL db, not flat files), features (arguably, UBB has tons but so does vB) and price. vB is $85 for one year, or $160 to keep the license and $30/year after that to keep downloading the latest version.

You can see vB3, Jelsoft's latest project, at http://beta.vbulletin.com/vb3/ . I plan to upgrade to the beta once it's released so you can see what I think of it from an administration point.

That vB3 demo site doesn't have the official vB3 style set yet, just a temporary one while they work on the backend. So vB3 final should look much different but have the same features.

[I, Brian]

I figure that YaBB is scripted similar to UBB? Either way, personally would think YaBB superior to UBB. And free.

vBulletin costs? Isn't php.bb free??

Brian

[filburt1]

phpBB is not that efficient and IMHO (and other's opinions too) looks amateurish.

You can ask yourself, why don't many large companies use free boards? The answer is they are simply not designed for high traffic. Also, when you pay for the product, you pay for support.

InvisionBoard is supposedly much better than phpBB, I've been meaning to try it out. :)

[I, Brian]

On the issue of support, though - there's a large dedicated YaBB following, and apparently plenty of help - the designers there on the yabbforum.com board to answer when people query.

Never needed - yet, anyway. Only technical issue I ever had was some confusion over the server path.

Hmm, let's see - WHT is on a vBulletin, then - with a few Mods on top? Actually thought it was php.bb, until you mentioned it.

You got a link for a working php.bb? I'll be looking to set up a new bb soon, and if I manage to learn something about MySQL before the new year then I can have a go with one of those formats, otherwise it'll have to be YaBB again - preferring not to, though. Been there, done that. Like to try something new, thus looking around.

[filburt1]

WHT is on vB with one hack at I can see at least: the Quick Reply hack.

phpBB has a demo at http://www.phpbb.com/ . If it's free you might want to check out iB instead, though.

[eviled]

I found that vB is way too expensive for just the novice webmaster to medium. i am currently using phpbb, and it works great. ib takes time to configure and needs lots of different launagues installed. phpbb, just uses php, and mysql to make it faster. my vote, phpbb. i did find myself a hack for vb, but it wouldn't install right, and i could get no support in the vb forums cause i didn't by it. unless your site makes major bucks, stay with phpbb.

-EvilEd

[filburt1]

Well of course you won't get support for a product you didn't buy; I don't even answer support questions about vB here because I can't confirm their license status.

I do agree with you that for novice/medium webmasters vB is not for them, but at my point where I have a ton of pages all interconnected and depending on one another and referencing a db in a spiderweb of PHP and MySQL, I need something to bring it all together, which is why I chose vB. I paid for the leased license so it was only $85, but well worth it.

[inthezone]

I have tried virtually all of the boards on my site, both free boards and pay boards. Of the free boards, I think yaBB-SE was the best by far. It installed very quickly and is the most professional-looking of the free boards. It is relatively fast and has some decent features. I also tried phpBB and thought it was cool at first but the novelty of the look got old very quickly, plus the admin-end features are non-existent. Others I've tried: Woltlab Burning Board 1.0, XMB Magic Lantern, Prolix OpenBB, ikonBoard.

I had heard great things about vBulletin, but I was more familiar with UBB, so I bought that (in June) instead. Big mistake. UBB was very slow, became a resource-hog, and was quite dull, so I bought a vB owned license a month later and it has been a great purchase to say the least. It is so much easier to customize, has many more admin and user-end features, and is infinitely faster. It is amazing to check back on UBB's website and see them implementing "new" features like "Who's Online" and the "most recent post" javascript-arrow, which vB had long ago.

In conclusion, if you just want a small community or are on a tight budget go with YaBB, but if you want to make forums a focal point of your site, plan on having a lot of users, and can afford it, go with vB.