phpbb vs vbulletin

giants10 · 11-26-2008, 09:15 AM

What exactly would you say is the major difference between phpBB and vbulletin, SEO? how is a forum indexed by google?

oracleguy · 11-26-2008, 07:29 PM

The biggest difference is that vBulletin costs money to use. You have to buy it however that isn't a bad thing, you get support through email and their support forums and you can purchase phone support if desired.

Maybe WA will drop in and give some insights into that since vBulletin is what we run here on CF.

millsi80 · 11-27-2008, 02:50 AM

For a basic forum phpbb2 should be fine. vbulletin has more functioanlity and more support options, but phpbb2 is fine for a basic forum and they have forums and tons of guides, how tos and faqs if you need help.

imi_99 · 11-29-2008, 11:03 PM

its only support u get with vbullet.

WA · 11-30-2008, 12:52 AM

I know not everyone is in the position to spend close to $200 on a forum software, but if a forum is going to be a part of your site for the long haul, I think it's important to think about which forum software has the features, upgrade frequency and support to keep you a happy customer for many years. My last experience with PhpBB was with the 2.x series (not the new 3.x), but just between that and vBulletin, there's no contest which one is better- vBulletin. Phpbb's control panel is severely lacking in features, a lot of them crucial ones. Customizing Phpbb's templates require manually editing text files. And the final straw is how much Phpbb forums get spammed and the lack of spam fighting tools. It got so bad I basically threw my hands up in the air, dropped the entire database, and installed Simple Machines instead (this is for another site).

Again, I'm not sure how much Phpbb has changed with their 3.x series. Might be a completely different beast than its predecessor. But I can vouch for vBulletin.