What forum engine

[BrowserGamesFactory]

As we are getting close to the launch of some BrowserGamesFactory sections we would like to have some input on what forum engine to use.

Also give some input why you like forum engine A more than forum engine B. This from a users/visitors viewpoint not as a forum admin/mod.

[Dave]

SMF will always take my choice.

[Dominion]

WBB IF you change the look. love it but omg i am so sick of this look :|

[Nickson]

Other,

I really like the MyBB if it comes to selecting a pre-made non custom package, you need to do some workarounds to prevent spam signups though(I've tested this, bots will only be able to sign up, but they can't post on a default installation). But I really like the structure, code base, and so forth of the package. Plugins are also available, however, a lot less than SMF or PHPBBs choice. However, MyBB is more of a complex forum, not only admin wise, but just overall, it's rather complex.

PS: If I may believe A_B XenForo should be a quite good package as well, but I have never used this one myself.

[Jordan Palmer]

I would say SMF or WBB

[BrowserGamesFactory]

@nickson

XenForo , I'm afraid that it will be a resource hog as vB is but that's purely my assumption due to the fact it's made by the former lead dev of vB.

[Cronus]

SMF as it is pretty easy to work with and is always improving

[Dayo]

I like useBB reasons are

Easy to integrate into your HTML template

Simple forum with no nonsense

And its easy to use

[CJ - Twitch]

I like useBB reasons are

Easy to integrate into your HTML template

Simple forum with no nonsense

And its easy to use

I second this.

[Danny696]

I acually like either SMF or WBB, both are nice.

[Djkanna]

Well as I was directed to it by Alain and it's stuck with me all this time, I'm voting for Xenforo as it looks awesome. ;)

[BrowserGamesFactory]

Ok following the MWG response we will use SMF, why not XenForo I'm personally still watching from the sideline ... engine is pretty new still and as it's from the former lead dev of vBulletin afraid that it will be a massive resource hog. I am somehow surprised that vBulletin is the big loser in this poll.

Our community boards will be named B-Com

B-Com is short for BrowserGamesFactory Community - A creative community for browser game developers and artists

Board categories will be

 

• BGF Station, general discussion folders regarding BGF Services
  
• Game art, several folders, including tutorials, etc
  
• Employment, folders related to jobs (paid/unpaid) at browser games
  
• Challenges, a example was posted on MWG titled Fight of the titans where we all used the same object.
  
• Programming, this will not be dedicated to certain game engines, see it from a broader perspective but again related to browser game development (posts asking for help eg mccode related will be deleted)
  

[The Monk]

vB or SMF.

Both have their ups and downs.

The one plus they do share is being better(imo) than the other forum engines.

[BrowserGamesFactory]

Explain better ....

I agree that vB has a large community and loads of modifications as themes, but it gets killed by the massive resource usage. vB isn't made to be used on shared servers imo , well it will work fine if you only have a 500 users but a forum like MWG would eat up all server resources.

[The Monk]

In all honesty vB is just a personal preference.

Great choice of themes which used to be what attracted me to a site, now its more about content.

SMF is not my personal preference but as you said you're worried about server resources, its fairly lightweight and shouldn't give you too much trouble.

I've never used it myself other than as a regular member but from what I know the set-up/administration is fairly simple.

Other than that, SMF is free, vB is not.

Very little being risked trying SMF.

[Paradox]

I have used IPB and vB for the last 4 years. I found that vB likes to eat bandwidth. IPB is propably more efficient using div’s and it has a more semantic markup, but both should be overhauled. Both say they are xhtml transitional, but meh. Both systems are heavy on tables. As well as being slightly better and being less heavy on tables in comparison to vB, IPB also has a better caching system. So if you will consider bandwidth, this will be quite a significant factor.

Visually IPB will always look more "appealing" to me, although vB kind of hints at professionalism, if you know what I mean. For example, it depends on your niche, but if you need a forum for a business then vB should be the one, and if its just a forum to discuss PC Games or something then it would be better to go with IPB. Or perhaps that is just my.

From a SEO point of view they both use dynamic gerenic file names with id strings passed. vBulletin has some good free add-ons for mod_rewrite rules which is pretty much the same as IPB's FURL. However, the SEO advantage would be with vB because there is the commercial product, vbSEO which is great. In addition to mod_rewriting urls, it will also 301 all the old URLs, it will re-write meta tags dynamically based on the topic information and most importantly it will add Adsense section targeting.

http://www.vbseo.com/

vBSEO achieves full URL normalization for your forums, which means "one URL per resource" to absolutely maximize the flow of "link value" through your site. This means that every page on your site approaches its "optimal" ability to "Get Traffic"... which is exactly what you want. Without URL normalization, this cannot happen on a grand scale.

 

Higher AdSense ad relevancy leads to increased clickthrough rates & boosted revenue. vBSEO's Adsense Targeting feature is based on the Google AdSense Section Targeting format. There are also tags specified by Google that allow vBSEO to indicate content on a page that should not be used to determine relevant AdWords to display.

 

vBSEO helped create the forumsphere with the introduction of Linkbacks by enabling forums for blog-like link building characteristics (pingbacks, trackbacks) and then, we invented RefBacks. The result is 3 different mechanisms for automating relevant inbound/outbound link building.

I had brief experience with MyBB which was pretty pleasant. Again one to consider, especially since it has very nice plugins. :)

Overall for your specifications I would go for vB. It has its disadvantages in having a bad caching system, and being heavy on tables so it will eat alot of bandwidth, but I think that it would still be the most appropriate choice. vB is superior to the other forums mentioned such as XenForo and SMF... and it would be stupid to take XenForo over vB anyway, its still in BETA and considering they have the old dev team of the old vB and will be programmed in the same way eating just as much bandwidth. My advise would be to research more on myBB and then decide between vB or myBB.

[S.Cosmin]

I would say vBulletin or IPB. If you want a free maschine you can use MyBB.

[gooberface1990]

I don't want to use a forum pre-made. I would create my own forum with custom made bbcodes.

[Dominion]

I don't want to use a forum pre-made. I would create my own forum with custom made bbcodes.

Why is that? Smf for example works very well with little editing unless you want to add things to it. Why waste time...

[gooberface1990]

I don't want to use a forum pre-made. I would create my own forum with custom made bbcodes.

Why is that? Smf for example works very well with little editing unless you want to add things to it. Why waste time...

idk. I just don't like the way some open source forums is hard to understand in coding wise. I just want to do my own work.

[Zeggy]

idk. I just don't like the way some open source forums is hard to understand in coding wise. I just want to do my own work.

Would you build your own plane because you don't understand how commercial planes work? :P

[gooberface1990]

idk. I just don't like the way some open source forums is hard to understand in coding wise. I just want to do my own work.

Would you build your own plane because you don't understand how commercial planes work? :P

well, if I learned how to build an air plane and I have more than enough money to build one, I'll see witch one is better than owning one. plus, owning your own plane is better than going onto a commercial one because you get to a place faster than commercial.

[Zeggy]

If you learned how to build an airplane, then I think you'd understand how planes work. Likewise, if you learned how to write forum software, then you'd be able to understand how other forum software works.

'How fast' you get to a place with your own plane over a commercial plane is irrelevant and untrue... you're confusing the metaphor and taking it too literally.

If you can't understand how forum software works, how do you expect to write one of similar quality? The OP is asking for a serious forum software to use and I'd think quality is an important criterion. Writing your own forum software also has a huge time cost even if it doesn't cost money.

[BrowserGamesFactory]

well, if I learned how to build an air plane and I have more than enough money to build one, I'll see witch one is better than owning one. plus, owning your own plane is better than going onto a commercial one because you get to a place faster than commercial.

This is off topic, but I have several friends with a cesna, a commercial flight is still faster... main difference is that you can't land where you actually need to be ... for instance try to land with your bi propeller cesna at heathrow, charles de gaulle airport, brussels airport etc .... oh and a airbus or boeing isn't much slower than private jets ....

And if you are a tiny bit smart .... maybe you've heard of the 'spruce goose' the great visionair, designer and owner of the plane died in a commercial flight .....

Anyway back to topic,

Open Source is often better than non open source software/scripts. There are thousands of examples around the net why Open Source is often better.