Forum Software Feedback

So one thing that’s been bugging me in the past couple of months is the general state of vbulletin. It’s looking like v4 (which is what we’re running here) will not see further feature updates, and I haven’t been very impressed with v5, which is a bit all over the place.

With that in mind, I’ve started poking around a bit just to see what else is out there. I’m personally liking the look of IPB, since it’s fairly similar to vb in terms of how it all works, so there wouldn’t be a drastic change-up there. There are also more radical alternatives like Discourse.

What I’m really interested in is everyone else’s views on this. Is there a forum software you particularly enjoy using? Would you rather we don’t change a thing? Let us know!

Bear in mind that nothing’s set in stone as to when we’d switch or whether we’re switching at all. Really just wanting to get an idea of your take on it all.

I’ll be honest, I compare other sites to SD’s. These forums have tons of usability and features, and a decent mix of light and dark in the theme (though would prefer a little darker). Basically I’m not fussed about what you use, as long as you retain the awesomeness we have here at the moment then it’ll be a winner regardless.

IPB is probably my favorite, and I would recommend that. It has a nice admin control panel, good forum features, and good security features. I think it’s cheaper than vBulletin too right now? I don’t really remember. vBulletin was probably my second favorite, but I haven’t been admin-ing very many forums recently other than ones that run MyBB, so I don’t know what has changed in vBulletin and haven’t used that one in a while. XenForo isn’t bad; it is more socially oriented than the others in it’s default features unless IPB and vB have added more standard features.

Anyway, if you want something better than vBulletin I’d say IPB. Xenforo would be my second choice for you. I wouldn’t recommend choosing anything else over what you currently have unless there is something that is really bothering you about vB.

Hey Badman, I think you really should think a lot before switching… Vbulletin is really great…
I took a look at a site with discourse (as a wp plugin) but I didnt like the layout of it
here take a look: http://discuss.howtogeek.com/
and Ip board… well maybe… had big problems at the omni-bots forum when I should try to post a link here: http://omni-bot.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/3262-waypoints-for-ho-chi-minh-trail/

but that may just be that they have to set the right permissions…

If I were you, I would stick to what you got…

If you absolutely have to renew the site… get another theme…

thats my suggestion

I don’t see the point in moving to something like IPB or close alternative, it’s too similar to what we have now, doesn’t offer any major wins, lacks some functionality we’re used to, has an inherently unnecessary learning curve, etc. Quite frankly I’m used to vB, know my way around and like that it has CKEditor support.

For me the main reason to change would be to make better use of newer web technologies (e.g. RESTful Ajax APIs), shake things up a little and embrace the change (meaning we might lose things like user groups, but instead get new toys like infinite scrolling to play with), whilst at the same time providing a cleaner, more pleasant user experience and fixing some of the complaints with our current home (clean urls, mobile support, bookmark posts, etc.). So something like Discourse or NodeBB would be better candidates in my opinion.

Of course if you would like to write an Ajax based Drupal forum from scratch I’d be very happy and may even have time to lend a hand.

I think functionality wise this forum is indeed one of the most complete I’ve ever seen. No need to change for me, unless you have even more nice features in mind.
I do agree with Mustang, if you’re switching make it big, what’s the point of all the effort if the end result is similar to what we have now?

I like the “clean design/look” of the BF4 forum: http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/forum/ but I have no idea what forum software they are using

Personally I dont like or use too many features. PM and File upload being the most important. Anything else is a bonus and potential security threat

If it has to be more and more… A cool thing that SOE made on PS2 was the twitter feed of the dev team members. On the side of the frontpage were always the “hottest news” on fresh implemented patches like “We ran into unexpected issue. hang on guys, we are on it” or “hotfix is up now”. Thats where forum posts just dont cut it. On not patch days it was more a mix of energy drink ads, work is so great and videos of trolling their conferences.

The one thing Id change for now on the forums are the smilies. I just dont like them. Especially that is horrible to me. Maybe some of your talented artists finds some time or you just download any other set, it can really only get better from my perspective. The rest of the forums is really cool to work with and im still a bit in shock after moving from the other one…

Ok, I found one feature that would be really cool. A dev post tracker. One big button in the top to list all the lasted posts of the devs.

That was a pretty useful feature in all of the SOE forums.

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?recent-activity/

That’s very high up on our list.

What does it mean if a person has 1 grey reputation star?

That means their rep display is disabled. We’re trialing this option at the moment…

people who opt out of rep display shouldn’t have access to the rep system at all, no add, no subtract

Any news on the dev quotes? I am short on time currently and it would help me to stay up to date on all favored SD projects

Badman any news?

I’m not badman, but I can tell you that there’s no news just yet ;). This is a discussion that could certainly do with being reopened internally. Thanks for bumping the thread!

Damn! I wanted to hear dat SOON!

About a year ago I had some plans which were discussed (with badman) and this topic was the result of that. The eventual conclusion was that it’d be too much work to swap to something and maintaining the sphere and momentum this forum has. With that in mind I wouldn’t expect any major/big changes although some features might be able to get added I guess (like you said, staff post tracker and things).

The staff post tracker is already in place. Has been for some time.
I still find vBulletin to be the best forum software available, I even revived it for our own website with a WordPress SSO plugin.

[QUOTE=Ca9ine;519208]The staff post tracker is already in place. Has been for some time.
I still find vBulletin to be the best forum software available, I even revived it for our own website with a WordPress SSO plugin.[/QUOTE]

Where is that staff post tracker?