Due to some weird issues we have been having with phpBB I have started talking with the team about our alternatives. The ones that stand out for best forum software are our current phpBB, or vBulletin, and XenForo upon first investigation. From reviews I have found, many people point out the same issues I have seen with phpBB and that XenForo seems to not have the problems we have here. Both are able to be freely modified, it looks like XF is more mod friendly. But vB seems to not allow mods as it is against the license. For our use, we need to be able to heavily mod the forum base to interface with outside utilities. Such as the account management and future tools I have in mind. It also seems the actual forum software mod community is much larger with XF. Down sides that both XF and vB have is, they are not free. vB is extremely expensive. Whereas XF seems somewhat justifiable. Just so that our members here are not blindsided by a drastic change, and that many of you may be able to leave some constructive feedback on which seems best from either an admin or a user standpoint is why I am reaching out on this idea. Please post any experiences you have had that can compare phpBB to either or if there is an option I have not discovered yet please share. One review that really stands out is this https://xenforo.com/community/threads/xenforo-vs-free-options.63660/ specifically comment 10 and 11.
Whats wrong with the current one? (serious question, besides some pictures not displaying) Seems to run fine on my end and even better before the theme was updated.
The back end tie in of sql vs php vs phpBB is in practice not actually supported or possible. The degree that we have gotten it to work from what someone told me is nothing short of a miracle. But we have come to the point where those limits are blocking further abilities. Also the installation of mods and the overall code is not very friendly to edit. It has caused many headaches.
It's hard to know which forum software is best from a usability standpoint because the default designs of them ALL are so god damn terrible. As a user my only real request would be that the themes be modifiable so we could maintain a responsive forum and not be forced into something like Tapatalk.
Maybe Drupal? http://tips.webdesign10.com/how-to-make-a-drupal-forum Might suck to get it up and running, but you might end up with something a bit more customizable in the end.
http://www.simplemachines.org/ I have used SMF for various guild sites and what not in the past. That being said it has been probably 10 years since I setup a forum site.
I used to be a big vBulletin fan and seem to recall that they had thriving mod community so I'm surprised to read about the licensing issues..
Well theme modding doesn't seem to be an issue, it's the other modding that is I guess. Like tieing in our web code to the game server and db.
The trouble with modding is applying security updates later that will usually break all your mods =( I think you'll run into that problem regardless of the forum you choose.
Ok we got XenForo. I been busy working on it and tailoring it to our needs. Someone once posted there was a lack of theme options. Well now you'll have about 58 themes Here is one:
Ok, all themes have the TAKP logo in them, now Rob and I picked 3 themes to start off with to customize to our liking. All themes will be avail eventually. But I figure 3 to choose from is a good start and to fully custom the setup to our needs is quite a bit of work.
