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Invision Power Board

4 (23.5%)

Phorum

0 (0%)

vBulletin

0 (0%)

Zorum

0 (0%)

UBB Threads

0 (0%)

Simple Machines Forum

2 (11.8%)

Vanilla

2 (11.8%)

Whatever, dude.  You know more about this shit than I do.

9 (52.9%)

Total Members Voted: 17

Voting closed: December 12, 2005, 04:38:14 pm

[jough]

As a christmas gift to the board I'm going to be upgrading us to new board software - the phpBB bugs and security holes are getting really annoying, and I use other board software for other forums and am always like "Oh man this would be cool as a madafakaaa over at TOUAMB!

So here are some choices I've seen that I think may be an improvement.  If you know of other board systems that you use elsewhere, let me know and I'll update the poll.

Here are links to the feature sets of the choices.  Most of them have live demos to play with to help you decide on which is better for YOU.  Some of these don't have converters from phpBB, so we'd essentially have to start from scratch (with this board archived or something I guess) if we went that direction.  Just something to consider.

Some of these cost money, but don't let that be a deciding factor.


Invision Power Board

Phorum

vBulletin

Zorum

UBB Threads

Simple Machines Forum

Vanilla

[JorgeFabregas]

I'm a fan of the Invision POWER BOARD (latter part must be shouted), but mostly because that's what I'm familiar and comfortable with.

[V-Adore]

My biggest concern is compatibility with the existing board. Which ones of these have phpBB converters? Unless a non-converter-having board is outright incredible, I'm really hesitant to put all of this purely as an archive.

[jough]

I think all of the incredible ones have converters.

I mean, it's not like the data is magick or anything.  Worse comes to worst I can figure out how to transfer the threads and posts and stuff to the new board.

[side_show]

I voted for "vanilla" because I like the name.

[AugustWest]

I'm a content over form kinda guy.  I'm not too concerned about all the bells and whistles -- I come here for the people.

That being said, I would support anything that makes the administration of the board easier on you, Jough.

[Turbo Ninja]

Another board I frequent - for alumni of the student radio station I worked at in college - just flipped to Simple Machines over the weekend.  I like it pretty good so far and it would be hell of nice (for no one but me) to have the same setup at both boards.

I'm sure, Jough, that I could ask the admin for feedback on the switch if you'd like it.

[pmcd9]

I completely defer to you Jough.  You are the best person to make this decision.

~Paul

[jough]

I kinda like Invision Power Board's features, but their license and prices are ridiculous:

https://www.invisionpower.com/customer/order.php?shop_cat=1,3,4

I'm also unsure about a converter for phpBB, but as I said, that's not that big of a deal.  Choop offered to help move the board to another system back in January - I don't know if he has time still, but I could probably figure it out.

Vanilla is nice looking but it's quite a culture shock to those who are used to phpBB.  And of course it's feature-poorer than phpBB (although really, how many "features" do we really need?).

I'm still trying to decide, and have added a "whatever, dude" option to the poll.

[arkabee]

i hate web-based forum things and pine for the halcyon days of usenet, ever more.

that being said, i log in here not to see the motherfuck*ng -faces to the left of the post editor, but to read things people have to say.

1- content must be transferrable from existing board to new board.

features i'd like to see:

well, i'd really like it not to mark all unread posts as read if i log out or time out or whatnot.  there's a certain sense of urgency that seems to come with logging into these web boards, such that if you don't read all the new messages you can't easliy read them later without reading posts you've already read before.

and we wouldn't want that.

2- not marking messages as read until they've been read.

don't spend money on it unless you have a hard on to spend money, since , well, because.

3- don't spend money.

[V-Adore]

My snap judgments:

Invision looks really feature-heavy, but I question how many of these features we really need. There seem to be a lot of permission/moderation/tight-control functions that seem a little unnecessary on a board of this (relatively) small size and good-natured membership base. That it costs money also hurts.

Phorum looks functional but just a little sparse. It reminds me of more primitive web boards and i-got-problems.com; this is not a bad thing, just a pretty big change from the current system, and not one I'm sure I all the way like.

vBulletin looks pretty robust, but it also doesn't quite sit right with me. There seem to be a lot of bells and whistles we just don't need on these things; the "related threads" bit in particular struck me as weird. Once again, it looks good for really big impersonal boards, but not for here.

Zorum is getting closer, but still feels a little... rinky-dink and impersonal, I guess. It kind of rubbed me wrong.

UBBthreads, Simple Machines, and Vanilla strike me as the most viable options. Vanilla is extremely vanilla, and is very old-school and texty; I would miss the avatars, but otherwise it seems very robust. UBB has a slightly weird feel, and SM is a little gingerbready, but both have lots of potential.

My important criteria:

1) Converter availability. I don't want to lose the stuff already here.

2) Easy/cheap-or-free for Jough. Nothing hugely expensive, nothing too difficult.

3) The basic PHPbb capabilities remain intact. This means... like, quoting, reliable read/not-read notes, stuff like that. Avatars are also good, although smilies I can truthfully live without.

I think this raises a question, though: do we want this new board to feel like the old one? I do, but I have no idea if I'm in the majority or not. Thoughts?

[CortJstr]

A usuable read/unread system is my main concern. The lack of this is one of the reasons that Achewood-ere Dumbrella bugged me.

Which reminds me, did you push the "last visit" threshold back to 2-hours on purpose for bandwidth reasons or was a side-effect of some other change?

[Lister]

I almost never notice what software a message board uses, but I'd like to throw in a big "no" vote for vBulletin due to its tendency to mark all the posts as read if I don't click on anything for fifteen minutes.  This is not Lister-approved behavior.  Of course, if that's just an option that can be turned off, I don't really care.  As long as it's off.

After a quick rundown of my bookmarks, it seems the only boards I don't mind using (and therefore don't notice) use phpBB.  I guess I'd say I have these criteria (bonus points if you can spot my pet peeve):

1. Don't mark stuff as read unless I read it or marked it read (by thread or by forum, anything other than "all forums").

2. Avatars.  Love 'em.

3. Decently usable formatting.  This is fine, basic HTML is fine, just some way to italicize the double exclamation points that, by law, come after "HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN!!"

4 (tie). Nested quotes, preview feature.

5. Don't mark stuff as read unless I read it.  If I stay on the compose post page for 20 minutes, it doesn't mean I magically read all the other posts.  Jesus, people.

[jough]

Yeah, if I were to design a board from scratch (and that ain't gonna happen anytime soon, people) I'd make the read status a database item so that things would remain indefinitely unread until you actually loaded the page to read it.

Of course, there's no way to tell if you actually read it.  But it should work like, say, every email client on the planet.

I'll take a look and see if anything matches this increasing list of criteria.  I can't guarantee everything that's important to everyone will be addressed, but some of these seem to be more group-concensus criteria so I'll try to abide.

I like avatars too.

[wombat]

OK, apparently I am too terrified of change to even click on those links.

I want the messageboard to look directly into my brain to see whether I read each post or not, and if I did, did I think it was really funny but I've already forgotten it so I should read it again, in which case it is also marked as unread.

OK, seriously all I know is that I want avatars and that 'posts since last visit' thing.  The only other messageboard I read regularly has such primitive software that I am not qualified to comment on anything else.