eclectica
2003-06-12, 05:40
I am familiar with vBulletin. It is the software driving this forum as well as Zeropaid (http://www.zeropaid.com/bbs/). vBulletin costs $85 a year for a lease, or $160 for a license.
phpBB is forum software and is one of the many fine creations featured on Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/). All of the software there is free and is open source. Here is the phpBB user's guide (http://www.phpbb.com/guide/phpBB_Users_Guide.html).
Another board running phpBB is P2P Forums (http://www.p2pforums.com/). I gave it a test run myself at http://www.napsterite.org/forum/ with version 2.0.4. It's open to the public, and guests can reply to posts.
It is a simpler program than vBulletin, and it has fewer options. In phpMyAdmin it has 28 tables, compared to 40 with vBulletin. It has more bugs, but considering it's free, it works okay. I didn't get to try out some features such as backing up the database. If money is not an object or you plan to run a bulletin board seriously, then I would go with vBulletin. If you are just starting out, want to experiment, or want to save some money, then go with phpBB.
Here are some things I noticed about phpBB when compared to vBulletin:
I had trouble uploading an avatar from my home computer. I had to get an avatar webhosted with a link in order to get it working properly.
PMs are not optional. They're mandatory. One can not turn off the option.
When an admin browses the board, he can not tell if a person has chosen to have the e-mail hidden without going into the control panel. In vBulletin, the admin does not see the hidden e-mail, except in the control panel.
There is no ignore list.
There are no custom titles that the users can set for themselves. Instead there is a thing called "rank", which is the default user title that a person can have after so many posts.
The default session length in phpBB is 3600 seconds, while the default length in vBulletin is 900 seconds. A longer session length allows the admin to gain a better understanding of who's online, because the person still appears online if the admin checks infrequently. No matter what it is set to though, it says on the front page of the phpBB forum: "This data is based on users active over the past five minutes". Actually that statement would only be accurate if the session were set to 300 seconds. vBulletin has a session limit option, which phpBB doesn't have. Here's where the trouble comes from. In vBulletin it is by default 0, or unlimited, meaning that if I go into the forum and then close the browser, and then open it up again within the session time frame, it will allow me to, because multiple sessions are allowed. In phpBB, a person will run into problems if he closes the browser and then tries to come back to the site within the session time. It will think he's already logged in, so it won't accept his login. That's why the session can't be too long in phpBB. But if it's too short, then the who's online (http://www.napsterite.org/forum/viewonline.php) is hard to keep track of for the admin. Because of this fluke, you see that there were 14 users online June 5 at napsterite.org. That was actually just me trying to log in, before I fixed the session problem by reducing the time. It is now set to 120 seconds.
IP addresses for users are not displayed except in the admin control panel. There is no way to track IP addresses in posts or to look one up of a user. It is possible to ban IP addresses though.
phpBB is forum software and is one of the many fine creations featured on Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/). All of the software there is free and is open source. Here is the phpBB user's guide (http://www.phpbb.com/guide/phpBB_Users_Guide.html).
Another board running phpBB is P2P Forums (http://www.p2pforums.com/). I gave it a test run myself at http://www.napsterite.org/forum/ with version 2.0.4. It's open to the public, and guests can reply to posts.
It is a simpler program than vBulletin, and it has fewer options. In phpMyAdmin it has 28 tables, compared to 40 with vBulletin. It has more bugs, but considering it's free, it works okay. I didn't get to try out some features such as backing up the database. If money is not an object or you plan to run a bulletin board seriously, then I would go with vBulletin. If you are just starting out, want to experiment, or want to save some money, then go with phpBB.
Here are some things I noticed about phpBB when compared to vBulletin:
I had trouble uploading an avatar from my home computer. I had to get an avatar webhosted with a link in order to get it working properly.
PMs are not optional. They're mandatory. One can not turn off the option.
When an admin browses the board, he can not tell if a person has chosen to have the e-mail hidden without going into the control panel. In vBulletin, the admin does not see the hidden e-mail, except in the control panel.
There is no ignore list.
There are no custom titles that the users can set for themselves. Instead there is a thing called "rank", which is the default user title that a person can have after so many posts.
The default session length in phpBB is 3600 seconds, while the default length in vBulletin is 900 seconds. A longer session length allows the admin to gain a better understanding of who's online, because the person still appears online if the admin checks infrequently. No matter what it is set to though, it says on the front page of the phpBB forum: "This data is based on users active over the past five minutes". Actually that statement would only be accurate if the session were set to 300 seconds. vBulletin has a session limit option, which phpBB doesn't have. Here's where the trouble comes from. In vBulletin it is by default 0, or unlimited, meaning that if I go into the forum and then close the browser, and then open it up again within the session time frame, it will allow me to, because multiple sessions are allowed. In phpBB, a person will run into problems if he closes the browser and then tries to come back to the site within the session time. It will think he's already logged in, so it won't accept his login. That's why the session can't be too long in phpBB. But if it's too short, then the who's online (http://www.napsterite.org/forum/viewonline.php) is hard to keep track of for the admin. Because of this fluke, you see that there were 14 users online June 5 at napsterite.org. That was actually just me trying to log in, before I fixed the session problem by reducing the time. It is now set to 120 seconds.
IP addresses for users are not displayed except in the admin control panel. There is no way to track IP addresses in posts or to look one up of a user. It is possible to ban IP addresses though.