phpBB

[autodata]

Howdy

So I decided to start a BB for a particular online community that's still solidly in the world of listservs. I already have a perfect domain, now I need to set everything up. I don't want to spend too much money, so the $160 for vB probably isn't going to happen.

So I'm thinking about running phpBB on an ipowerweb (http://ipowerweb.com/) account. As such, my questions are:

1. is phpBB (or the ipowerweb plan) good enough for a large community? I'm not looking for glamor, either, so I just want it to work and work well.

2. does anyone know about how hard it would be to switch to vB sometime in the future?

This forum could easily be anywhere for very popular to dead, so I have to leave my options open.

[ast3r3x]

Unless, there are better migration features, which I doubt, why don't you ask Brad and others how easy it was to migrate the old AI from whatever it was to vBB.

I was in the same boat, but since I knew php (or thought I did :lol: ) I decided to write my own. It's going pretty good, and I'm almost done. My main concert that it not be ugly. It's also pretty easily customizable but not feature rich...yet;) Had to tell ya, just because you can't not be outspoken of something that took you so much time to do.

phpBB isn't a horrible choice, and I think it scales pretty well. It'll serve you well, although I'm not sure you can beat vBB.

[autodata]

Yeah, I looked at the demo you posted somewhere. It looked like it was progressing very nicely.

I just came across PunBB: punbb.org. It looks great. It's too bare-bones for what need for this project, but I almost want to set one up just because.

A new question: how hard is it to change the forum set-up once people are posting heavily? I will probably have to add or subtract forums as I see what kind of discussions get more attention.

[Akumulator]

If you're looking for a free forum, Ikonboard (http://www.ikonboard.com/) isn't bad.

[LoCash]

vBulletin has a rather acceptable import tool to go from phpBB to vB 3.x. I have not personally tried to do it, but it looks like it would be a lot easier than going from UBB to vB (which is what we did at .com way back when.)

[Brad]

1. is phpBB (or the ipowerweb plan) good enough for a large community? I'm not looking for glamor, either, so I just want it to work and work well. Yes, it scales up just as well as the competition. Just keep in mind its limitations. Namely, relatively very poor administrative tools, no sub-forum options, etc.

2. does anyone know about how hard it would be to switch to vB sometime in the futureAs mentioned, importing to vB is a relatively painless task. vB offers tools to do this. Indeed, LoCash is right that it would be significantly easier than going from UBB to anything because UBB is file-based whereas vB is SQL-based.

[autodata]

relatively very poor administrative tools,
Yeah, I've noticed on the vB demo how nice the admin panel is. Hopefully some of the phpBB mods will make up some of the difference.

[Moogs]

I'm with Akumulator. Ikonboard is pretty cool software and the price is nice.

[ast3r3x]

Yes, it scales up just as well as the competition. Just keep in mind its limitations. Namely, relatively very poor administrative tools, no sub-forum options, etc.

As mentioned, importing to vB is a relatively painless task. vB offers tools to do this. Indeed, LoCash is right that it would be significantly easier than going from UBB to anything because UBB is file-based whereas vB is SQL-based.

Oh, I didn't know that. Hell I didn't know you could do that. Seems like a horrible way to do it.