So this is a fairly established software, few years old now. Where do I start, well firstly I think the default skin seems alright to be honest. Okay it's nothing amazing but hey it's nothing particularly ugly...quite a bit nicer than phpBB's Subsilver2. What I would say though is make you you have plenty of forums, if left short (as we'll see on the demo) the bottom looks fairly unfinished (you'll especially notice this on the User Control Panel). As far as my search went for "UseBB skins" on google, the results weren't particularly promising - I blame that on no CSS / HTML editor in the Admin Panel combined with people's reluctance to look through the theme files in the filesystem.
Moving quickly on to the general use of the software is seems okay (typical layout, quick reply as standard etc..). Changing between pages could do with a little work as it seems a little laggy on some occasions for me. I have also noticed a significant lack on content in the FAQ section - most answers being one or two line aswers. As far as the user control panel goes everythign you'd expect to see is there (Edit profile: Sig, Avatar etc..). The Admin panel seems fairly standard well, clean layout and only things that need to be there are there. It would seem the developers have tried to cram as much stuff as possible into a small space. For example the "Edit Member" page shows everything including: Edit Profile, Ban member, change rank, Basic (and I mean phpBB2 basic) permissions, contact details and general account options. All that as opposed to having say a page dedicated to the user's profile and another dedicated to the user's permissions.
To my shock and horror there appears to be no private message options of any kind, also no kind of admin control over things like avatar settings or signature settings. Of course it would be silly to expect a forum software such as this to compete with those such as phpBB, vBulletin or IPB...and it never will be able to compete with them. Here's why..
In order for the software's Email features to work properly to have to upload the forum software twice. Believe me this isn't something that was caused by one of my own faults. To make the software work properly you have to install it once as you would with any other bulletin board software (create a database and upload files etc...), then once all that's done you have to upload the entire file system again. Failure to do this will result in you getting an "E_USER_ERROR" which basically means your board can't send Emails.
Hot or not? You decide.
Live demo: http://pixelraider.com/demoforums/UseBB
Login: Demo
Pass: demoforums
Would like to hear your opinions ~smile~
Moving quickly on to the general use of the software is seems okay (typical layout, quick reply as standard etc..). Changing between pages could do with a little work as it seems a little laggy on some occasions for me. I have also noticed a significant lack on content in the FAQ section - most answers being one or two line aswers. As far as the user control panel goes everythign you'd expect to see is there (Edit profile: Sig, Avatar etc..). The Admin panel seems fairly standard well, clean layout and only things that need to be there are there. It would seem the developers have tried to cram as much stuff as possible into a small space. For example the "Edit Member" page shows everything including: Edit Profile, Ban member, change rank, Basic (and I mean phpBB2 basic) permissions, contact details and general account options. All that as opposed to having say a page dedicated to the user's profile and another dedicated to the user's permissions.
To my shock and horror there appears to be no private message options of any kind, also no kind of admin control over things like avatar settings or signature settings. Of course it would be silly to expect a forum software such as this to compete with those such as phpBB, vBulletin or IPB...and it never will be able to compete with them. Here's why..
In order for the software's Email features to work properly to have to upload the forum software twice. Believe me this isn't something that was caused by one of my own faults. To make the software work properly you have to install it once as you would with any other bulletin board software (create a database and upload files etc...), then once all that's done you have to upload the entire file system again. Failure to do this will result in you getting an "E_USER_ERROR" which basically means your board can't send Emails.
Hot or not? You decide.
Live demo: http://pixelraider.com/demoforums/UseBB
Login: Demo
Pass: demoforums
Would like to hear your opinions ~smile~
