Quote Originally Posted by Dr Unne
The phpbb control panel is comparable to VB. Attachments aren't something I'd like to have on any MB I ran anyways, but there are attachment mods for phpbb (as of a year ago; probably better ones around by now). phpbb has a berjillion hacks available if you go for that kind of thing.
I'd rather something that didn't need to be hacked and had it from the start. Like vB. It's better for boards of EoFF's size and nature, in my opinion.
Without mods it differs from VB in very few ways that I can remember. It's missing some of the crap VB includes which we never use, yeah. It doesn't have a calendar, for example; who ever uses the calendar?
Me.
phpbb is designed to be small and fast. Fast is something EoFF could use at the moment, in my opinion, but oh well. VB is becoming bloated.
vB itself has little to do with the speed issues we've been experiencing, unless you've been using Quick Reply, which I have never endorsed. The server is the problem - this is proven as we've never had any problems with vBulletin until we moved onto this server.
You don't have to know any more about coding to work with phpbb than to work with VB. The templates are simple HTML and CSS, from what I remember. I never touched the PHP back when I was working with phpbb, except for one little hack I added. I've had to mess with the PHP for VB many times as well. Remember when Bleys had to hack the MB every couple weeks just to get admins to have the word "admin" under their names?
Which is a problem we don't have so I don't know why you're bringing it up. I could bring up problems phpBB had before they were solved, too. I don't know of any software that has never had a problem.
Remember when last week you were contemplating hacking the VB just to change how cookies work?
Nope. I never contemplated hacking. I thought it was pretty clear that I was only going to mess with templates and that if a hack was needed I'd just go with 23 (which we did).
phpbb is no worse than VB in this regard. Any MB you wish to customize beyond a certain point will require PHP knowledge.
I don't know PHP at all but if I wanted to mess around to get phpBB to look like vBulletin, I'm pretty sure I would need to.
Just because something is the most popular doesn't mean it's the best in terms of quality. Popularity is often determined by marketing more than by quality. "Everyone else likes it" is often poor justification for saying something is worthwhile. The majority of people in the world use Windows, for example. Same reason people still use MP3s even though there have been tons of far better compression schemes available. I tend to trust myself beyond the general consensus.
I agree, but I don't see anything wrong with the quality of vB. Where are the problems? You had to put a -1 in? Is that really a problem if it works? It still runs smoothly, you can turn off the features if you don't want them, the support is nigh on perfect, the templates are easy to work around (yes, they are - I figured the majority of it out myself and am confident I could have done it all if I didn't have help, not that I don't appreciate it (I love help)), you don't have to hack it to death like you do with phpBB... the main improvement since vB2 that I really enjoy is that most things that you used to need to hack for now don't need a hack at all - you just put what you want into the templates and be done with it.
The real question to me is what does VB have that's different from phpbb, which would justify paying $160?
All the features it has, the incredible support and what is in my opinion most important - the Admin CP. From what I've read in the threads, phpBB loses out because it's designed to be so simple. Maybe that's the overall difference. Simple Forums vs. Feature/Control Forums. If you want to have a hell of a lot of control over how your board looks and works without having to hack the place to death, use vBulletin. If you want to have to go for hacks and would rather keep things simple, go for phpBB. If you don't think it's coded well but you can still work the place to do what you want, where are the problems?

If you honestly feel that you could get phpBB to operate as it does now using a phpBB and have the speed of the forums increase in any slightly significant way, you should probably talk to Cid about getting it done, because every little helps.

Quote Originally Posted by Baloki
In the next version of PHPBB absolutly nothing and its out soon *rubs hands*
No point in arguing by depending on the future. See IPB for details on that one.

EDIT: Having said that, I'd like to note that while I am firm in my opinion and belief that vBulletin is superior to phpBB and IPB and other such boards, I won't discount that other boards may be more advanced than vB in the future - I do keep an eye on phpBB 2.2 from time to time.