Invision Power Board Or vBulletin? For KWWHunction.

[eLight]

Which do you prefer? In specific, for KWWHunction. This poll isn't going to be the flick of the switch either, it's generally here to gather peoples opinions and ideas.

Consider the following:

• vBulletin 3 series is EOL, or at least is very soon.
• vBulletin 4 is seemingly a flawed product, or perceived this way.
• vBulletin 4 doesn't offer any considerable changes or improvements to vBulletin 3 besides a different code base.
• Invision requires large amounts of templating in order to maintain a sense of familiarity. It would require a completely custom KWWHunction IPB theme.
• There would need to be changes made in order to maintain KWWHunction features, some of which may or may not be transferable in a conversion such as the websites on your user profile.
• IPB comes with an easy to customize Mobile theme.
• vBulletin is generally known to all globally as it has been the benchmark since the ealy 00's.
• Depending on an upgrade or conversion to IPB, KWWHunction may require more or less hardware resources, more than likely more adding to the costs of running the website.
• Also, Moderators may not be familiar with tools and as such moderating may take a while to resume to normal operations. Same thing with administrators.
• Things would generally be found in different places and as such members may be easily confused by a different software if we were to change.

This isn't to say that we're going to change or not. Though it is on the tables. I just wish to gather some community input and ideas.

Look forward to your responses

eLight Reviewed by eLight on 5th Apr 2011. Invision Power Board Or vBulletin? For KWWHunction. Which do you prefer? In specific, for KWWHunction. This poll isn't going to be the flick of the switch either, it's generally here to gather peoples opinions and ideas. Consider the following: vBulletin 3 series is EOL, or at least is very soon. vBulletin 4 is seemingly a flawed product, or perceived this way. vBulletin 4 doesn't offer any considerable changes or improvements to vBulletin 3 besides a different code base. Invision requires large amounts of templating in order to Rating: 5

[Terror]

Mhm, to be honest v Bulletin.

But I'd rather xenforo.com

[SuicidalMedia]

Even though that vBulletin 3 won't be developed anymore, I'm 100% sure that there won't be any major vulnerabilities. Biggest Internet Communities are using vBulletin 3, not only because:

• It's easy to use.
• It really doesn't spend that much resources like IPB does.
• It can be lite without having to remove bunch of unnecessary things like on IPB.
• You can make anything out of it with little HTML/CSS knowledge.
• Everyone is familiar with it.

Those are some of the reasons, it's true that vBulletin 3 has bunch of released modifications, and pretty much all of them are supported. But the important thing is that no matter what they try to do with XenForo, IPB and vBulletin 4 they can never achieve the same thing like they achieved with vBulletin 3, it was and it remained the best commercial forum software.

[Mr Happy]

vBulletin was the best commercial community script of the early 00's but AOL was the best search engine too. You have to move and adapt with the times.
Any feature you say cannot be converted is a limit on the admin and his coding abilities and not on the script.
Staff and most of the active members are intelligent so implying they will have trouble with the new layout is an excuse and an insult to their intelligence.
Jasons comment about the html and CSS is also a terrible excuse. Any good designer and coder can create any layout just like vBulletin. A poor coder or designer will struggle.
Jason's comment about IPB's resources are also false. vBulletin is very heavy compared to IPB if you have the settings optimized correctly. Kids who import hundreds of useless mods and plugins without activating any of the optimizing settings give IPB an undeserved resource hog name.

The simple matter of fact is KWWHunction can't stay with vBulletin forever.It either moves now or leaves it another year when it's forced to move. Either way it's only a matter of time.

EDIT:
For those that don't know KWWHunction was previously converted to IPB by the old staff over a year ago. The theme wasn't converted but the site layout, posts and members were all successfully transferred. It all seamed to work perfectly and flawlessly.

[SuicidalMedia]

@Mr Happy
It's not a terrible excuse at all. Most of the Managers of boards powered by IPB are too lazy to explore and code new stuff. I have seen around 20 customized IPB boards, while I have seen TONS of HIGHLY customized vBulletin 3 boards. I have tested the IPB 3.x.x, and you really need to spend a lot of time with it, just to know its structure.

My comment was about the IPB's template structure, it's way more heavy than vBulletin's. Of course, you can make the lite one, but that involves removing of certain things, which requires knowing of the IPB's structure, because if you don't know what's ok to remove, you'll fuck something up.

[Mr Happy]

@Mr Happy
It's not a terrible excuse at all. Most of the Managers of boards powered by IPB are too lazy to explore and code new stuff. I have seen around 20 customized IPB boards, while I have seen TONS of HIGHLY customized vBulletin 3 boards. I have tested the IPB 3.x.x, and you really need to spend a lot of time with it, just to know its structure.

My comment was about the IPB's template structure, it's way more heavy than vBulletin's. Of course, you can make the lite one, but that involves removing of certain things, which requires knowing of the IPB's structure, because if you don't know what's ok to remove, you'll fuck something up.

How does that affect KWWHunction? So what if other webmasters are too lazy to customize a layout. It's not as if any of these "lazy" webmasters or poor designers or coders will be working on KWWHunction or at least I should hope they aren't.

[SuicidalMedia]

Well, yeah. Let's just hope that new Managers won't be that lazy like the old ones when it comes to the site design.

[House_maniac]

ipb is userfriendly and they are constantly adding new futures only thing that vb has is vbseo which is better than ipbseo from what i heard but ipb is better in many ways if you don't want heavy skins you can customize the default ipb skin which is kinda light or make a custom one

[eLight]

The upgrade path would probably go along the lines of this:

1. Create a secondary, non converted board to fool around on. Invite moderators to familiarize themselves with the new tools and stuff.
2. Create a skin to our likings as well as implement things like the chat box.
3. Invite members to check it all out.
4. Gather feedback and make changes.
5. Do a test conversion of the database, iron out any bugs or what not.
6. Set a date, and do the full conversion and update the main website to reflect this.

This process isn't a fast process, at all. In fact the longer that is spend on certain stages the better. This way our members know what to expect.

[Gh0st]

Well I've been using IPB for the past year, it's proven to be much more easier to use and manage in terms of Administration and managing everything. From installing mods to editing your templates/skins etc. I know I am not a pro with forum software and have used only a few of them which are phpbb, vBulletin and IPB. IPB has proven to be the best in terms of management for me.

And like Mr Happy mentioned, poorly customized mods does make IPB heavy on resources. I've learnt my lesson on that, but with the help of people like NewEraCracker I did learn a few things. Now with everything optimized to custom settings IPB works like a charm.

Anyhow, does anyone know the reason why the board was converted from IPB to vBulletin?