Forumotion. Yes or no?
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CyberFreak
Legendary Typer
Hosts do play a part in my decision. I will not sign up at any freeforums.org forum as they are always slow and a crap host in general. Even if it was the best forum (which i would doubt it would be on a free host) i would still not sign up as i know i would either not get to view it most of the time or would pull my hair out trying to read the site due to the no suitable node errors or slowness.
Anyway, back in terms of forumotion, i wouldn't really deliberately avoid them but if i am undecided then the fact it is on forumotion would turn me away but if it was still a decent forum i would still join though. My answer is a yes or no really.
Anyway, back in terms of forumotion, i wouldn't really deliberately avoid them but if i am undecided then the fact it is on forumotion would turn me away but if it was still a decent forum i would still join though. My answer is a yes or no really.
I used to have a forum with Forumotion, as a starter forum it was absolutely fine. Ever since they have sorted out their servers it runs so much better, hardly an down time and quite quick loading pages. I'd recommend it for a beginner admin so I'd say fine for an ordinary member to use too. 🙂
CyberFreak
Legendary Typer
I am going to go a bit technical here so you might want to skip my post Misstake 😛
Forumotion run phpBB2 and not phpBB3. Because of that it does lack some features that phpBB3 offers aswell as being based on outdated code. Alot of the code has be re-written hence all the features that it has that phpBB2 doesn't have. Of course though some bits are still phpBB2 code which is why they still promote it as phpBB and have the phpBB notice in the footers and so on (that and the fact saying it is phpBB is a good selling point in a free way if you get what i mean). Going back a year or so, some people here might remember a user called Oliver who used to spam the hell out of forumotion forums until they gave up and closed their forum. In phpBB3 there is a nice feature to delete a user and it gives a choice to keep or delete their posts aswell. In phpBB2 (and forumotion) that feature isn't available. If you delete the account, the posts stay. When Oliver spammed the forums with hundreds of posts, all had to be deleted manually and took hours. If somebody tried it here, they would be gone in seconds. Big difference.
They may claim it is phpBB3 on forumotion but it is not. If you go onto their website HERE and click preview against the first style for example HERE and select FAQ, one of the categories will be "phpBB 2 Issues" 😉 Also if you go the faq page on joels forum, you see the same - http://www.advertisehotspot.com/faq.htm
You cannot move away from them at all. Once you are stuck with them, you are there for the life of your forum. As with free hosts, forumotion has the usual free host issues. Slow speeds and downtime, limits on control, can't add any features/mods you want, can't integrate websites as easily as we can on normal webhosting, can't install other scripts like Wordpress, Joomla etc and bridge them either. You can't make your own backups. You trust that they will keep going and not lose their data or close. You have to wait for support to fix problems, even when you know how to fix them yourself. Some hosts allow you to buy a backup of your database (heck even freeforums.org allows you to do that). No doubt the reason why forumotion don't let you buy a db backup is due to them using a highly modded version of phpBB2. Personally i would not recommend them to anyone.
Want a free forum host then prophpBB is pretty good - http://www.prophpbb.com/ The use proper phpBB3 and i am pretty sure you can get a db backup too if you want to move away.
If you want proper control (like we have) where you can integrate a website with the forum, install other scripts and so on then a web host is the way to go. Install a copy of phpBB3 (it's free). Install a style and then you are almost done. You can either install mods or get someone else to do them and you have full control and do anything you like without restrictions like on free forum hosts. You can even add you own ads to make money or be totally ad free without paying loads for ad removal.
Forumotion run phpBB2 and not phpBB3. Because of that it does lack some features that phpBB3 offers aswell as being based on outdated code. Alot of the code has be re-written hence all the features that it has that phpBB2 doesn't have. Of course though some bits are still phpBB2 code which is why they still promote it as phpBB and have the phpBB notice in the footers and so on (that and the fact saying it is phpBB is a good selling point in a free way if you get what i mean). Going back a year or so, some people here might remember a user called Oliver who used to spam the hell out of forumotion forums until they gave up and closed their forum. In phpBB3 there is a nice feature to delete a user and it gives a choice to keep or delete their posts aswell. In phpBB2 (and forumotion) that feature isn't available. If you delete the account, the posts stay. When Oliver spammed the forums with hundreds of posts, all had to be deleted manually and took hours. If somebody tried it here, they would be gone in seconds. Big difference.
They may claim it is phpBB3 on forumotion but it is not. If you go onto their website HERE and click preview against the first style for example HERE and select FAQ, one of the categories will be "phpBB 2 Issues" 😉 Also if you go the faq page on joels forum, you see the same - http://www.advertisehotspot.com/faq.htm
You cannot move away from them at all. Once you are stuck with them, you are there for the life of your forum. As with free hosts, forumotion has the usual free host issues. Slow speeds and downtime, limits on control, can't add any features/mods you want, can't integrate websites as easily as we can on normal webhosting, can't install other scripts like Wordpress, Joomla etc and bridge them either. You can't make your own backups. You trust that they will keep going and not lose their data or close. You have to wait for support to fix problems, even when you know how to fix them yourself. Some hosts allow you to buy a backup of your database (heck even freeforums.org allows you to do that). No doubt the reason why forumotion don't let you buy a db backup is due to them using a highly modded version of phpBB2. Personally i would not recommend them to anyone.
Want a free forum host then prophpBB is pretty good - http://www.prophpbb.com/ The use proper phpBB3 and i am pretty sure you can get a db backup too if you want to move away.
If you want proper control (like we have) where you can integrate a website with the forum, install other scripts and so on then a web host is the way to go. Install a copy of phpBB3 (it's free). Install a style and then you are almost done. You can either install mods or get someone else to do them and you have full control and do anything you like without restrictions like on free forum hosts. You can even add you own ads to make money or be totally ad free without paying loads for ad removal.
Fowler said:
Cheeky Imp :lol:
I read and understood 90% of that thank you very much 😛
When I had a review from Richazey he recommended to upgrade to phpBB3, I took a look into it and could have done (or so it said) if I hadn't already just updated all the graphics.
I don't think there's any harm in being a member on a Forumotion forum to be honest, it's just a case of read and post and provided the forum isn't overwhelmed with graphics it should load up pretty quickly.
el canadiano
Paragon
Joel said:
Are you trying to convert from Forumotion to phpBB 3?
http://www.simplemachines.org/community ... 188741.280
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... 5&start=30
This guy (same guy on either link) has a lot of converters going from remotely-hosted forums to phpBB 2, phpBB 3, or SMF (and it should be noted you can go to any other forum software through phpBB 2/3 conversion). Let me know if you have trouble converting yourself or you want the Proboards (he deleted it because Proboards was barking) converter.
As for the topic itself, I'm not really turned on by any remotely-hosted forum primarily because of the lack of customizability (if memory serves me correct I don't know of any remotely-hosted software that supports any modifications). It's uniqueness that makes me want to join something.
I don't see why people downgrade ForuMotion. There's nothing wrong with ForuMotion besides the constant issues with the new updates (however, they do get solved after a while by the technicians.) ForuMotion has a very simple, yet conveniently large, administration panel. You can even pick from several forum versions: phpbb2, 3, punbb, and Invision. They even give you a free domain name if you keep your forum active. I haven't paid not 1 cent for a domain nor ads for forumansion.com. Also, with the template editing for phpbb2 and punbb, you have more accessibility with editing your forum.
Rok said:
Yes exactly. Who says a Forumotion forum wont turn out good? Look at Rok's one! www.forumansion.com
I'm going to make a nice little rant here, but not libelous.
Forumotion runs on a self-coded piece of PHPBB, PunBB and IPB. These are all self-coded and thus any MODs or updates do not correlate with Forumotion. Forumotion actually has parts of separate softwares (vBulletin, IPB and PhpBB) and their technicians have coded it all together to create the software Forumotion (it's a host and software).
Forumotion has improved a bit over the last few months, but is still 4 years behind all other softwares. Only about 1 month ago could you have a Global Announcement, or have uploads. I mean seriously, such a simple innovation 5 years ago could have seen many more serious members. Forumotion lacks a simple MCP and ACP like found on real PHPBB forums and so moderating members is a hassle. Like Fowler said, when Oliver made his spam attacks, no one could do anything through one action, rather all the moderators had to remove posts one by one.
Forumotion's self coded BBCodes allow HTML segments in it. I was able to create a code and place it in my signature so when a user visits that thread, it would redirect to my website. This could be used for spamming and little in known about the ability of it.
Forumotion has about 10 fairly active forums. The largest being HideCodesGalore (over 1 million posts), then the support forum and then the next few are over 100,000 posts. It isn't a popular piece of software and software does play apart in it's ability to succeed.
Forumotion does not allow you to move hosts, even with a payment, it still belongs to them. However, there isn't any need to move because the software is all self coded and so you can't align it with MODs and the PHPBB support forum. I was lucky enough to sell my Forumotion forum but that was due to its activity.
Since it's self hosted, there have been constant server stuff ups meaning all forums will go down, even the support forum. The support forum is demoralizing. I asked a member to check out a thread in the support forum that would help them and was warned for spamming.
Forumotion does allow you to buy domains but they cost about $22 per year. One good thing is that you are able to transfer them by request to the head admin at the support forum, but he also runs the French support forum, so he is on the English support forum about 4 times a month.
Forumotion doesn't allow you to remove anything from the footer. Removing the footer will void your forum and they will ban it. Regardless of how much work you put in, once the footer is gone, so is everything else, even if it was a coding accident.
Using Forumotion was a hassle and I would strongly not recommend it for people with a true idea and something unique. You will eventually find yourself in a black hole, being sucked in by Forumotion's dodgy rulings. As a member, I would avoid being active on a Forumotion forum because it will eventually go down (unless you are those 10 or so forums who have started 5 years ago and succeeded in their own right). As a beginner admin, I would recommend a free host and a real copy of PHPBB or MyBB or something at least allows you to move hosts if you do succeed.
Edit:
To be honest Rok, once you pass the 500,000 post mark (noted down as a large forum), you can say that Forumotion is good, but for your situation. Because your genre was the first in Forumotion, that's why people have visited your forum.
Forumotion runs on a self-coded piece of PHPBB, PunBB and IPB. These are all self-coded and thus any MODs or updates do not correlate with Forumotion. Forumotion actually has parts of separate softwares (vBulletin, IPB and PhpBB) and their technicians have coded it all together to create the software Forumotion (it's a host and software).
Forumotion has improved a bit over the last few months, but is still 4 years behind all other softwares. Only about 1 month ago could you have a Global Announcement, or have uploads. I mean seriously, such a simple innovation 5 years ago could have seen many more serious members. Forumotion lacks a simple MCP and ACP like found on real PHPBB forums and so moderating members is a hassle. Like Fowler said, when Oliver made his spam attacks, no one could do anything through one action, rather all the moderators had to remove posts one by one.
Forumotion's self coded BBCodes allow HTML segments in it. I was able to create a code and place it in my signature so when a user visits that thread, it would redirect to my website. This could be used for spamming and little in known about the ability of it.
Forumotion has about 10 fairly active forums. The largest being HideCodesGalore (over 1 million posts), then the support forum and then the next few are over 100,000 posts. It isn't a popular piece of software and software does play apart in it's ability to succeed.
Forumotion does not allow you to move hosts, even with a payment, it still belongs to them. However, there isn't any need to move because the software is all self coded and so you can't align it with MODs and the PHPBB support forum. I was lucky enough to sell my Forumotion forum but that was due to its activity.
Since it's self hosted, there have been constant server stuff ups meaning all forums will go down, even the support forum. The support forum is demoralizing. I asked a member to check out a thread in the support forum that would help them and was warned for spamming.
Forumotion does allow you to buy domains but they cost about $22 per year. One good thing is that you are able to transfer them by request to the head admin at the support forum, but he also runs the French support forum, so he is on the English support forum about 4 times a month.
Forumotion doesn't allow you to remove anything from the footer. Removing the footer will void your forum and they will ban it. Regardless of how much work you put in, once the footer is gone, so is everything else, even if it was a coding accident.
Using Forumotion was a hassle and I would strongly not recommend it for people with a true idea and something unique. You will eventually find yourself in a black hole, being sucked in by Forumotion's dodgy rulings. As a member, I would avoid being active on a Forumotion forum because it will eventually go down (unless you are those 10 or so forums who have started 5 years ago and succeeded in their own right). As a beginner admin, I would recommend a free host and a real copy of PHPBB or MyBB or something at least allows you to move hosts if you do succeed.
Edit:
To be honest Rok, once you pass the 500,000 post mark (noted down as a large forum), you can say that Forumotion is good, but for your situation. Because your genre was the first in Forumotion, that's why people have visited your forum.
I have to agree with all the no's. For any beginner admins you do need to stay away from here because it will void your knowledge of phpbb and totally confuse you when you got to actual phpbb. I was one of those people who made the mistake of doing a forumotion forum in my first years as an admin. Let's just say it wasn't pretty. Anyways, i have to agree that is simply horrid. Everyone has basically hit the nail on the head here.
HawkPokemon
Paragon
I don't see whats worng with Forumotion. They have great Admin Panels that are easy to use. They may be free but who cares. There servers are much faster than they used to be and they have cool features that some other hosts don't have.
Kevin X Dragon
Paragon
Darthmaul said:
I think he means other free forum host.
I have used Forumotion and I am not fan of the host. If you have no other option and have to pick a free forum host, I would recommend, http://www.prophpbb.com/.
SheepishWolf
Paragon
I think he means along the lines of how they give you a free domain if you get high enough activity ect.
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