Choice Of Forum Software For Website - Any Recommendations ?

[WhiteVanJack]

Hi,

If anyone has experience of hosting a forum on a website I would appreciate some advice on the selection of forum software. I am aware of I.P. Board, vBulletin and SMF (Simple Machines Forum) as options and wondered what the pros and cons are between these three. In addition, if anybody has other recommendations I am happy to take that on board.

If I am correct, SMF is free software whereas I.P.Board and vBulletin have to be purchased. I am OK with paying for the forum software but if the free one is nearly as good then I would opt for that.

Any advice most appreciated.


Rgds
Jack

 

[Monkeh]

SMF or phpBB3 (this forum runs a modified phpBB2) will almost certainly suit you fine.

 

[gblades]

It depends on what operating system is being run on your hosting. phpbb is very good and typically is run on the linux hosting which is normally the cheaper hosting option. So if you want something to run on a strict budget but still being a very popular and feature rich forum application that would be the one to go for.

 

[opps]

Hi Jack

I run a SMF for SEO reasons. My forum is crap and I haven't utilised it properly, not enough time. Most of my time is spent deleting people that are obvioulsy going to spam.

Overall it is pretty easy to tweak and the support forum isn't too bad.

i am evidentally on a "try to spam list" but it hasn't been hacked yet- unlike joomla sites that i have used before

It works fine on a shared hosting acc in the US.

If you want to play with one I can set one up for you on my uk based vps.

Phpbb3 will work better with joomla et al if you also need a CMS

I have never tried the paid for versions though.

 

[Monkeh]

It depends on what operating system is being run on your hosting. phpbb is very good and typically is run on the linux hosting which is normally the cheaper hosting option. So if you want something to run on a strict budget but still being a very popular and feature rich forum application that would be the one to go for.

Please explain why the (bad) choice of a Windows platform affects the choice of forum software.

 

[WhiteVanJack]

Thank you all for your replies.

I discovered phpBB after I made the post hence its exclusion from my original list. Are all the applications mentioned in this thread fairly equal at coping with decent volumes of traffic or is that purely related to the web hosting options in place? For example, would any of the mentioned bulletin boards be likely to crash with 300 concurrent users on the assumption that the web hosting is able to cope with the traffic?


Rgds
Jack

 

[Monkeh]

The forum itself doesn't run as a single process. It's not possible for it to 'crash' as such, if the serving machine(s) are sufficient and correctly configured.

I don't have any stats handy on performance, but 300 concurrent users (defining users as registered, posting accounts, not guests) is a very heavy load for a forum. I would say SMF or phpBB would outperform the proprietary alternatives such as vBulletin, however.

 

[opps]

if you haven't alreadt got web space I am happy to give you some (with cpanel) and set up something like smf for you to play with and try. Once you are ready you can set it up properly.

 

[opps]

The forum itself doesn't run as a single process. It's not possible for it to 'crash' as such, if the serving machine(s) are sufficient and correctly configured.

I don't have any stats handy on performance, but 300 concurrent users (defining users as registered, posting accounts, not guests) is a very heavy load for a forum. I would say SMF or phpBB would outperform the proprietary alternatives such as vBulletin, however.

Why would that be?

Tnx

 

[Monkeh]

The forum itself doesn't run as a single process. It's not possible for it to 'crash' as such, if the serving machine(s) are sufficient and correctly configured.

I don't have any stats handy on performance, but 300 concurrent users (defining users as registered, posting accounts, not guests) is a very heavy load for a forum. I would say SMF or phpBB would outperform the proprietary alternatives such as vBulletin, however.

Why would that be?

Tnx

Uh, which bit of the post are you asking about?

 

[opps]

sorry monkeh

Was wondering why smf would outperform the others.

 

[Monkeh]

sorry monkeh

Was wondering why smf would outperform the others.

Well as I said, that's only my expectation. And I don't know if it'd outperform phpBB or the other way round. However, due to SMF and phpBB being open source, not to mention free, they get a great deal more exposure to programmers other than their developers. Generally this results in higher code quality.

 

[opps]

ok thanks

 

[WhiteVanJack]

if you haven't alreadt got web space I am happy to give you some (with cpanel) and set up something like smf for you to play with and try. Once you are ready you can set it up properly.

opps,

Thank you for the kind offer of some web space. Could I please get back to you on that?

I am currently trying to find out what my best options are for web hosting as apart from a forum I hope to be able to host some dynamically interactive web pages where users can select options and then run queries and retrieve data sets and predefined reports from a back end database. I need to find out which level of web hosting will have the capability to store the database and cope with the bandwidth as the generally available starter packages offering 2gb of space or less will not be enough. I am in the process of transferring some databases into MySQL and once I know the size of these when in MySQL I will be a bit clearer on the web hosting requirements.

At the moment re the forum, I need to make a decision on which one to use and my main concern is the robustness if traffic levels get to the 300 concurrent user level. I realise the 300 concurrent users is high volume but it's more a case of overkill as I do not wish to have to migrate to different forum software at a later date due to traffic impacting on the forum functionality.

I think in reality I may need to go for some type of semi dedicated hosting due to the size of the back end MySQL database for the dynamically interactive web pages. Hopefully, this will easily cope with forum traffic so I do not envisage forum problems from the web hosting side. I just need to be sure that I am selecting a robust forum that can cope in its own right.


Rgds
Jack

 

[WhiteVanJack]

......However, due to SMF and phpBB being open source, not to mention free, they get a great deal more exposure to programmers other than their developers. Generally this results in higher code quality.

Monkeh,

That's an interesting observation and not one that I had thought about. I was thinking the reverse, whereby, if it has to be purchased then it should be better quality, however, that may not actually be the case and the freebies would be better if your logic is correct.


Rgds
Jack