55 replies to this topic

[mripguru]

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I'd suggest trying to get more traffic before making any big changes to the layout, especially ones that would cost money, but that's just my opinion..
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But you see - thats the problem. It's a catch-22.

[Memphis38128]

I would have to say that I do like VBulletin myself.

[The Black Hat]

I don't visit here regularly anymore but I used to. I'll always hold a special place for this site in my heart. I remember the days it was TeenHelp (the the conspiracy in which we lost it). I refer to those as the Dark Ages.

More to the point, vBulletin vs. Invision Power Board. Which is the superior software?

I hold licenses to both and run both at separate places on the web. During my time, I have come to the conclusion Invision is by far a better product. When it comes to security, I can tell you Invision holds the upper-hand. They release security fixes much quicker than vBulletin does.

At this time, I know three major exploits in vBulletin.They have existed since their last major release. Regardless of how many times they are reported, vBulletin has still not released a patch that fixes these issues. What's funny about this is that they fixed the exploits on their COMPANY forums but they exist in the new customer releases. Not a good way to run a business.

Invision on the other hand takes pride in their work. They go the extra mile to make sure that their software is secure. I discovered an exploit in the new RC3 they released and reported it. It was fixed promptly by them.

Server wise, Invision runs smoother. Face it, vBulletins code is aging and aging fast. That software is in need of a desperate revamp but they continue to build on old code. Invision on the other hand does not. As time progresses, they clean up their code. They update it. They detail it, so to speak.

Software-wise, Invision is superior. Their new RC3 does circles around vBulletin. It does not eat as much system resources, is more secure, offers more user-friendliness, more administrative features, it's a better software.

Switching from Invision to vBulletin would be a major mistake. I dare say that it would kill whats left of this community. You guys have the best product on the market right now. Invision Power Board. Do not sacrifice that for a second-place product.

[The Black Hat]

Damn it I can't edit my post. You need to do something about that...

There's several major advantages of using IPB over vB, I will list a couple for you, but these are by no means them all:

• Optimization - IPB uses a different style of coding, it's much more efficient and puts your server under far less strain. There are jokes that vBulletin can be used as benchmarking software.
• Cleaner User Interface.
  
• Easier to use ACP. This has been true for a long time, but IPB 2.1 makes this even better.
  
• IPB has a powerful and expansive components system that allows you to plug extra functionality into the system, such as their blog and gallery additions. Whilst vB has a similar system, it's badly implemented (in my opinion) and uses functions that serve only to increase the strain on your server.
  
• Innovation - New features in IPB keep on coming, these are innovative changes that nobody has done yet. IPB's Version 2.1 added a whole array of new features, which later appeared in vB 3.5. I don't know about you, but I want to be with the innovators, rather than playing catchup.
  
• Cost - Whilst IPB isn't cheap, it's far less expensive than vB in terms of initial and yearly outgoings.

[Hobofuzz]

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Damn it I can't edit my post. You need to do something about that...

There's several major advantages of using IPB over vB, I will list a couple for you, but these are by no means them all:

• Optimization - IPB uses a different style of coding, it's much more efficient and puts your server under far less strain. There are jokes that vBulletin can be used as benchmarking software.
• Cleaner User Interface.
  
• Easier to use ACP. This has been true for a long time, but IPB 2.1 makes this even better.
  
• IPB has a powerful and expansive components system that allows you to plug extra functionality into the system, such as their blog and gallery additions. Whilst vB has a similar system, it's badly implemented (in my opinion) and uses functions that serve only to increase the strain on your server.
  
• Innovation - New features in IPB keep on coming, these are innovative changes that nobody has done yet. IPB's Version 2.1 added a whole array of new features, which later appeared in vB 3.5. I don't know about you, but I want to be with the innovators, rather than playing catchup.
  
• Cost - Whilst IPB isn't cheap, it's far less expensive than vB in terms of initial and yearly outgoings.

[/b]

Sorry to grave dig, but I have to agree with you.

In my experiences, vBulletin is a kludge. Its database code is inefficient, first of all. It creates larger databases than an IPB setup with the exact same content. It searches through databases far slower than IPB, and consumes far more CPU time than IPB. The ACP is horrid, and takes more clicks to do simple things than it does in IPB. I've seen more vB forums down far more often and for far longer time periods than IPB.

IPB is also updated far more often than vB. vB rarely has minor updates, while the tiniest bugs in IPB will produce updates.

IPB also uses less space than vB, it caches data far better and efficiently, and isn't incredibly expensive. The money this place will spend on a vB license could be used to buy its way to the top of a search engine. Honestly, buying new forum software just for the hell of it while what is currently in use is perfectly alright is terrible webmaster practice. Websites running dynamic content should NEVER be changed in such a monumental way unless ABSOLUTELY necessary, such as the product has a massive security hole, and the company no longer supports it. Changing forum software is extremely noticeable, and will alienate many, many users who are so used to the current layout. I've used pretty much every forum software out there, and IPB is, hands down, the best out there.

[Leapfrog]

Adam has already made the purchase and the site should be launched on vB within the next week.

I believe the overall deciding factor for Adam was the fact that vB is more search engine friendly. I have used vB for 4 years, and have also used IPB, phpBB, SMF and currently also using MyBB.

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hanging forum software is extremely noticeable, and will alienate many, many users who are so used to the current layout. I've used pretty much every forum software out there, and IPB is, hands down, the best out there.[/b]

A noticable change was gonna happen wether we moved to vB or stayed on IPB. We have not upgraded this site to the current version of IPB because the modifcations we have can not be ported over to the newest version of IPB.

Besides Adam I know of 2 other webmasters who are preapring to switch there large sites to vB.

[daffodildreams]

We're running VB and have nearly 40,000 registered users on it. It just makes /sense/ to run it for a forum.
Also - you should have pushed them for a donated copy. They're generous guys.

[Leapfrog]

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We're running VB and have nearly 40,000 registered users on it. It just makes /sense/ to run it for a forum.
Also - you should have pushed them for a donated copy. They're generous guys.
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We were able to get them to reduce the price to half.

It does make sense to run it. I totally agree. I trully think this site will be better with it then without it.

[VittorioCole]

In the words of the Madagascar penguins, on discovering that Antartica was't quite as fun as they'd expected..

"Well. This sucks."

:(

[Jake]

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In the words of the Madagascar penguins, on discovering that Antartica was't quite as fun as they'd expected..

"Well. This sucks."

:(

What do you dislike about it?

[VittorioCole]

-No skins. I know, its small, but this ones fugly, and when people first come to the site, its what they see first.

-No noticable improvements over the last one. Remind me again why we just *had* to have this?

-I lost all my PMs. I guess i should back up all of my PMs whenever i get them, because that just doesnt carry over.

-Login is still screwy with me. I have to log in every time i want to post a reply to something.

-Tags disabled in signatures. I like my sig pics, thank you, and http://www.photobucket.com/ambulace/whatever.jpg just doesnt do my photoshopping justice.

-More and more glitches, like the magical April 14, 2015 date.

All in all, i think this is more pain then its worth. IMHO.

[Leapfrog]

VittorioCole;486439 said:

-No skins. I know, its small, but this ones fugly, and when people first come to the site, its what they see first.

Ok we have said many times now that a new look is being worked on. It's not an immediate thing. I believe Jake is working on it, although he appears to come on the site every few days.

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-No noticable improvements over the last one. Remind me again why we just *had* to have this?

The major improvement is not a ntoicable one. vB is alot friendlier to search engines then IPB. That was the main reason for the switch.

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-I lost all my PMs. I guess i should back up all of my PMs whenever i get them, because that just doesnt carry over.

I believe there was a warning about that in the announcement posted about the switch

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-Login is still screwy with me. I have to log in every time i want to post a reply to something.

Check your cookies.

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-Tags disabled in signatures. I like my sig pics, thank you, and http://www.photobucket.com/ambulace/whatever.jpg just doesnt do my photoshopping justice.

It's possible that HTML is disabled. Skye can better reply to that. HTML can cause a security hole in alot of cases, so its sometimes best to disable it.

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-More and more glitches, like the magical April 14, 2015 date.

That was not vB. That was a server error. All my sites are on the same server as HT and I had the same problem. Not a fault of vB.

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All in all, i think this is more pain then its worth. IMHO.

Hasnt even been a week yet. It is not easy converting a site the size of HT onto vB, or any other forum software for that matter. Skye is working hard on geting glitches taken care of.

I dont want to discourage anyone from pointing out errors, BUT pelase understand that this isnt gonna be a quick snap of the fingers and be better.

[Skye]

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-No skins. I know, its small, but this ones fugly, and when people first come to the site, its what they see first.

-I lost all my PMs. I guess i should back up all of my PMs whenever i get them, because that just doesnt carry over.

-Login is still screwy with me. I have to log in every time i want to post a reply to something.

-Tags disabled in signatures. I like my sig pics, thank you, and http://www.photobucket.com/ambulace/whatever.jpg just doesnt do my photoshopping justice.

-More and more glitches, like the magical April 14, 2015 date.

The site design is being redesigned by Jake. This is temporary.

The personal messages were messed up badly. I was reading other peoples personal messages in my inbox. You were told this may occur during the conversion process and to be honest I had no issue deleting them all because compared to the topics and posts they are irrelevant. If you still want your personal messages, I can go in and export them to myself as an HTML archive, but it will have to be requested specifically.

The login problem you are describing is because you stop browsing the support groups and you have not check marked "Remember Me?" in the login form. You have to check that to be remembered between sessions through cookies. It's a minor change but I could make it checked by default. Would you like this?

The signatures I'm not sure about. Some images in signatures work, others don't. Have you tried re-adding them manually with the vBulletin editor controls? I'll play with my signature and add images and see what is going on. Perhaps I have cross-site scripted signatures disabled, i.e. image.php?img=blah inside the image tags rather than site.com/blah.gif. Those are often disabled by forums because if you allow those rotating scripts, they can have malicious cross-site scripting attacks that can compromise among other things your MySQL database password simply by running the system command "cat yourconfigfile.php." So I don't enable that, even on IPB.

I believe there is an option to let you UPLOAD a signature image. Let me find it.

[Skye]

Update: I thought I had that upload a signature image option enabled, but it turns out it was enabled for every user group but registered users. I'm sorry for the oversight but when I was making these permissions I was dead tired after having just converted the support groups. Thank you for finding the inconsistency in my permissions. I apologize.

You are allowed an image that is 500 pixels wide, 100 tall, and 50,000 bytes.

"Remember Me?" is now set to checked="checked", it will be selected by default.

[Leapfrog]

I should have checked, the thing is, Skye uses different settings then I would use, so I dunno what to set things at.

[Skye]

Update: I have played with the signature pictures. They work. You just need to reinsert them into the signature with the vBulletin editor. Or you can switch the editor mode to BBCode mode where it does not show the images or bold text as they will be shown in the post (WYSIWYG mode), by clicking the the button at the extreme top right of the editor and it should parse older BBCode just fine. You can also upload one image for a signature image directly to our server--that is an alternative as well. If you need anymore assistance, please let me know.