Which Forum Platform Is Best?
Discussion
Hi all,
I have some questions for the more IT minded if I may. A pal wants to build a forum site (for pianos) and was wondering:
a) which programing language to use? .asp (as per Pistonheads forums) or .php (as per Ferrari Chat) and why?
b) which platform is better for the chosen language? ASP playground or vBulletin/IPB etc?
c) Depending on who he speaks to he is being told that the php platforms are better supported, but I was wondering why the PH forum site was built using .asp?
d) Are there any UK companies out there that specialise in building web chat foums?
He seems to be getting varying answers depending on who he speaks to. So I figured I would throw it out there to the PH massive
Thank you for any feedback you could offer.
I have some questions for the more IT minded if I may. A pal wants to build a forum site (for pianos) and was wondering:
a) which programing language to use? .asp (as per Pistonheads forums) or .php (as per Ferrari Chat) and why?
b) which platform is better for the chosen language? ASP playground or vBulletin/IPB etc?
c) Depending on who he speaks to he is being told that the php platforms are better supported, but I was wondering why the PH forum site was built using .asp?
d) Are there any UK companies out there that specialise in building web chat foums?
He seems to be getting varying answers depending on who he speaks to. So I figured I would throw it out there to the PH massive
Thank you for any feedback you could offer.
Edited by runway78 on Friday 28th May 20:25
Having played with a few starting with Snitz, vBulletin is very good. The amount of "products" available is very impressive. Have a look here:
http://www.vbulletin.org
http://www.vbulletin.org
Also, something I stumbled across which I mean to have a look at at some time:
http://www.boonex.com/
If you do happen to try it, any feedback would be appreciated.
http://www.boonex.com/
If you do happen to try it, any feedback would be appreciated.
The programming language is neither here nor there. The "right" one will depend on the skillset of the developers, the hosting infrastructure and personal preference / opinion. You will find that PHP developers are more plentiful and cheaper.
The 2 big players in the PHP world are vBulletin and phpBB. vBulletin carries a licence fee whereas phpBB is free. IMHO both are bloated and have excessive amounts of features that will never be of any real value. For instance, who cares how many users were ever online at one time? They also feature such attrocities as signatures, avatars, user ratings and other junk that just clutters up the page.
Forums the scale of PH can't possibly run on off-the-peg platforms like the two mentioned above, they simply aren't up to the job.
The big question you need to ask yourself is this: why will people come to YOUR forum instead of another one? If you can't answer that, my professional advice is that you need to figure out a good reason for them to do so before you start building anything. Our biggest community, which is a minnow in comparison to PH, is around 120,000 members and generates around £1.4m revenue. It has taken the best part of a decade to get it to that point.
ETA - we build community sites, including forums, for other people too. Your friend is very welcome to contact me for some free advice.
The 2 big players in the PHP world are vBulletin and phpBB. vBulletin carries a licence fee whereas phpBB is free. IMHO both are bloated and have excessive amounts of features that will never be of any real value. For instance, who cares how many users were ever online at one time? They also feature such attrocities as signatures, avatars, user ratings and other junk that just clutters up the page.
Forums the scale of PH can't possibly run on off-the-peg platforms like the two mentioned above, they simply aren't up to the job.
The big question you need to ask yourself is this: why will people come to YOUR forum instead of another one? If you can't answer that, my professional advice is that you need to figure out a good reason for them to do so before you start building anything. Our biggest community, which is a minnow in comparison to PH, is around 120,000 members and generates around £1.4m revenue. It has taken the best part of a decade to get it to that point.
ETA - we build community sites, including forums, for other people too. Your friend is very welcome to contact me for some free advice.
Edited by miniman on Tuesday 19th January 18:06
selwonk said:
Also, something I stumbled across which I mean to have a look at at some time:
http://www.boonex.com/
If you do happen to try it, any feedback would be appreciated.
Google "Boonex and scam" for some interesting info....http://www.boonex.com/
If you do happen to try it, any feedback would be appreciated.
ipsg.glf said:
selwonk said:
Also, something I stumbled across which I mean to have a look at at some time:
http://www.boonex.com/
If you do happen to try it, any feedback would be appreciated.
Google "Boonex and scam" for some interesting info....http://www.boonex.com/
If you do happen to try it, any feedback would be appreciated.
Chaps,
you make some interesting points. Based on what you have said above, I have some queries if I may -
- while there may be more php developers about, as the language is open source, is their competency typically higher than asp guys? E.g. a guy who has completed a degree in maths is probably better trained/skilled at maths than a guy who has just studied at HND level. As in, is asp a harder langauge to programme in hence the guys tend to be of a higher intellect/skill level. (Not wishing to offend anybody with that question or the crap analogies, but hopefully you get the jist of it)
- And why couldn't those off the shelf platforms handle the site traffic if it became as large as Pistonheads? FYI, his site never would be as big as PH as it will just be about the now defunct Bentley pianos. More importantly, the members won't be the yoof down with computer tings,so a clean easy to manage and surf site would be best.
- Why do you not like signatures and avatars? Too much clutter?
you make some interesting points. Based on what you have said above, I have some queries if I may -
- while there may be more php developers about, as the language is open source, is their competency typically higher than asp guys? E.g. a guy who has completed a degree in maths is probably better trained/skilled at maths than a guy who has just studied at HND level. As in, is asp a harder langauge to programme in hence the guys tend to be of a higher intellect/skill level. (Not wishing to offend anybody with that question or the crap analogies, but hopefully you get the jist of it
)- And why couldn't those off the shelf platforms handle the site traffic if it became as large as Pistonheads? FYI, his site never would be as big as PH as it will just be about the now defunct Bentley pianos. More importantly, the members won't be the yoof down with computer tings,so a clean easy to manage and surf site would be best.
- Why do you not like signatures and avatars? Too much clutter?
Avatars and signatures are, IMHO, very community specific. They can be switched off in vBulletin. You can also switch them off as a user.
In terms of stability, my relatively large vBulletin install still works reasonably well in a shared hosting environment. Some judicious modifications, including including vbOptimize, keeps it all running pretty well. Ultimately it will be moved to a dedicated server, and will now doubt benefit. In the meantime, it's not bad at all...
In terms of stability, my relatively large vBulletin install still works reasonably well in a shared hosting environment. Some judicious modifications, including including vbOptimize, keeps it all running pretty well. Ultimately it will be moved to a dedicated server, and will now doubt benefit. In the meantime, it's not bad at all...
runway78 said:
- while there may be more php developers about, as the language is open source, is their competency typically higher than asp guys? E.g. a guy who has completed a degree in maths is probably better trained/skilled at maths than a guy who has just studied at HND level. As in, is asp a harder langauge to programme in hence the guys tend to be of a higher intellect/skill level. (Not wishing to offend anybody with that question or the crap analogies, but hopefully you get the jist of it )
It's not strictly open source, it is licensed under a specific PHP licence. It's not really about it being "free" either, as ASP is also "free" but if you want to execute it commercially on a web server then the de-facto platform is Microsoft IIS which you have to pay for. However you can, if you really want to, run ASP on Apache. )I would actually say that ASP is **easier** to get to grips with if you are working with the most frequently adopted VBScript model - if you seek out some raw code, ASP makes much more sense to the untrained eye than PHP. I could never get my head around PHP but I can write simple ASP pages.
runway78 said:
- And why couldn't those off the shelf platforms handle the site traffic if it became as large as Pistonheads? FYI, his site never would be as big as PH as it will just be about the now defunct Bentley pianos. More importantly, the members won't be the yoof down with computer tings,so a clean easy to manage and surf site would be best.
IMHO mainly down to bloated features that aren't essential. They typically render masses of information to the screen - e.g. they will list out the time, date, poster, last post, first post, first x characters of the post as a tooltip, list of people logged in yada yada - all of which takes processor time and is extremely hard to cache effectively. So after a while they begin to struggle. That's not to say they can't cope with larger sites - here's one of ours which is pretty busy and vBulletin copes ok with it - http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/runway78 said:
- Why do you not like signatures and avatars? Too much clutter?
The purpose of an avatar is to show who the user is for each post. PH does it via the user nickname. In theory, it is easier to pick out a specific person's posts via their avatar. Then you get this nonsense appearing:As for signatures, the really annoying thing is that people will list out every car they've ever owned, all the mods for each of them, the name of the girlfriend, their mum, the details of their criminal record, a s
tty animated gif and an advert for their stbox Corsa on eBay. And then just post "lol" which, of course, now takes up 28 lines once their sig is added. Here's a nice little example:
http://www.saxperience.com/forum/showthread.php?t=...
Now, the audience will determine how much of this stuff goes on, however it's nice and simple to stop it right from the off by not using these "features".
Slightly hijacking thread.... what webfourm software comes with a mailing list interface/integration, so that users can just get the posts via email rather than having to use a web browser to read? (e.g. www.lyris.com is a mailing list software that has evolved into providing a web interface )
There is actually a modification for vBulletin 3.8.x (IIRC) and above which does this. I've not tried it, but it allows users to reply to forum threads via email. I think the main difficulty was the need for a mailbox per sub-forum, which on a larger forum could make it difficult (or, at least, time consuming) to set up.
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