vBulliten. Is it worth it?

[el canadiano]

MyBB is very customisable indeed. My themes have all been modified to get a bit more of a vBulletin 3 feel.

I advise you to not get it. It won't be the same now that Kier Darby is not with the team anymore. vBulletin 4 has already been patched up a couple of times, and even then, it's still very buggy. Kier would never have allowed vBulletin to get that. If you want a commercial forum software, I recommend IPB. IPB 3 is great, had more useful features, and actually is a lighter package than IPB 2.3. Also, its support has always been significantly better than vBulletin's and the community is much more relaxed.

 

[Keaton]

If you forum is big or rapidly growing, and your members don't mind advertisements so you get some of the cost back, then I'd say yes but if you are just starting up and have no idea whether your forum will get anyway - no.

 

[demondestiny]

It's very popular and easy to use and there support is the best you can find.

 

[Impulse]

I think vBulletin is worth it, but if you're considering upgrading to it I recommend the 3.x series because the new one sucks. Too many bugs.

I use to run a vBulletin forum and it did really well, managed to go up to 30,000 posts in 4 months. It's very easy to install new modifications and create/modify the skins.

 

[Nebulous]

vB is great! I love it.. Best Christmas present ever. 😛
It just oozes quality, down to the smallest detail.
I have a lifetime vb4 license. That includes the other versions below 4 as well. For now Ive decided to stick with v3.8.4. There is 100x the mods for it and it is more stable. I will upgrade to v4 one day though.

 

[sportastephanie]

Cool, thanks everyone, I've learned so much about how you feel using vBulliten and other forum providers. I have moved my forum to IPBfree for the time being, it's a bit harder to make skins for but has some nice features that Zetaboards did not have.

 

[el canadiano]

If you have a good concept, good theme, active staff and good advertising it shouldn't matter what you are running.

Hell I know a very active site that is still running Vanilla.

But IPB3 and vB4 are both much easier to run than phpBB3, SMF and MyBB.

IPBFree is horrible. If you have the money to buy a paid forum software, by the real IP.Board. Ever since Internet Brands charged users $90 just for the sake of allowing users to have vBulletin 4. That was just promotional if you get it before a certain date (early December). After that, all users (even current customers) had to buy it for full price. Even then, by default configurations, vBulletin 4 is too much on the server, more than it should be (200 queries if I'm not mistaken).

Even if you can't buy a forum software, MyBB and SMF are still great choices. Both are very easy to install mods and templates and such.

 

[SettledHate.]

I really see it this way.

IPB > vBulletin 3.0 > MyBB > vBulletin 4.0

Just my personal opinion.

 

[el canadiano]

Well you gotta remember, at around December, the leads of vBulletin basically had an overhaul. When Kier Darby (former Project lead) left, that was basically what brought down vBulletin.

 

[Shiny Star]

If you want a good one, you could always use php.

 

[DarkRaven]

If you have a good concept, good theme, active staff and good advertising it shouldn't matter what you are running.

Hell I know a very active site that is still running Vanilla.

But IPB3 and vB4 are both much easier to run than phpBB3, SMF and MyBB.

IPBFree is horrible. If you have the money to buy a paid forum software, by the real IP.Board.

I never mentioned IPBFree. IPB3 is the latest major release.

Nevertheless, I agree with all your other points.

 

[el canadiano]

Quoted the wrong person =/.

 

[SpeedJunkyz]

I like my looks with Vb....not sure if it plays a role but I can not for any reason get my forum off the ground. I advertise like crazy lol....Im about to switch themes HAHA

 

[sportastephanie]

Maybe it's not the provider as much as the topic your board is. I really don't think the provider matters too much but people all have their preferences. It must really suck to have purchased vB and not get your forum going.

 

[Cosmic]

Well, you can reuse VB on another project if you want. 😛

If the forum provider doesn't matter why'd you switch from zetaboards, losing all of your posts?

 

[sportastephanie]

Zetaboards is very good, but IPBfree has more features that I like to use, and it looks a bit more professional. vB seems to be the forum provider that all the big forums use and yes it costs a lot of money, but some people can't spend the money on that but still can make a big forum. That's what I am trying to do. It's much harder to do but I do not want to be one of the people to spend 200 dollars only to fail at making a forum with it.

 

[DarkRaven]

Why not get a domain and paid hosting, then install one of the free scripts like MyBB, phpBB or SMF? They aren't as good as vB or IPB3 but they work. Also from personal experience MyBB is ten zillion times better than IPBFree or Zetaboards.

Hosting a small community like yours shouldn't cost more than $4 a month and a domain costs about $10 a year. Also there are tons of P2H services like Trap17....

 

[sportastephanie]

My community may be very tiny now, but I want it to grow and get really big, I plan on getting a domain, but I want to wait until I get small, have about 100 members. I'll check out MyBB and see if I like it.

 

[el canadiano]

Why not get a domain and paid hosting, then install one of the free scripts like MyBB, phpBB or SMF? They aren't as good as vB or IPB3 but they work. Also from personal experience MyBB is ten zillion times better than IPBFree or Zetaboards.

Hosting a small community like yours shouldn't cost more than $4 a month and a domain costs about $10 a year. Also there are tons of P2H services like Trap17....

Even then, as you said, there are many good free hosts, like ej.am, 365hosting.com, and wehostyour.info. All three of them offer cPanel like a paid host does. Then, it's all about the domain. I guess a co.cc could be good to start, but it's well-worth it if you can buy a .com either with a PayPal or even just a Visa/Mastercard gift card. GoDaddy and NameCheap both often have many different coupons every month. I personally use Dynadot for my domains. The bottomline is that when you host your own forum, it's much easier to customize your forum with mods, themes, and such.

 

[DarkRaven]

My community may be very tiny now, but I want it to grow and get really big, I plan on getting a domain, but I want to wait until I get small, have about 100 members. I'll check out MyBB and see if I like it.

ZB and IPBFree won't give you the database. Trust me, move when you are small. When you get big, you'll lose all your members during the transfer.

You can move your members and posts using a Python script, but that's illegal... So yeah, move when you are small.