what do you prefer ipb,phpbb or vbulletin

Anish · Joined: 30 Apr 2008 Posts: 6

I like IPB, its a good and powerful community system. However it has less mods, the themes and customization is easy. vBulletin is also good but requires bunch of coding to modify.

Jason · Joined: 15 Aug 2008 Posts: 5

For a paid forum software, I prefer vBulletin. However, my second choice would have phpBB.

I prefer vBulletin out of any other PAID forum software because it has a lot of benefits for a forum administrator. For example, there are SO many modifications for it to make it your very own. There are enough modifications to entertain your guests and at the same time, keep your forum organized and looking professional. If you don't find a good enough modification to suffice to your needs, you can simply request one and a MOD author may consider creating it either for free or for a small fee.

The other thing I like about vBulletin is that the Administrator Control Panel is easy to use and easy to navigate through. If you need to add a new usergroup with a fresh new list of features, then all you have to do is click on one small button and you'll be on your way to creating a private/public group for your members to join.

Also, the fact that you can edit templates so easily as well is what I favor A LOT about vBulletin. I can totally customize how the postbit looks like without completely destroying the forum.

So yeah, I definitely PREFER vBulletin when it comes to building forums.

conorod · Joined: 31 Aug 2008 Posts: 5

I prefer phpBB over vBulletin or IPB. It's free and open source and there are lots of MODs and themes available. There are MODs available to allow phpBB to do most of the things that vBulletin can do. I also find the control panel in phpBB much simpler and I can find what I want much more easily.

WaffleStomp · Joined: 21 Sep 2008 Posts: 20

I prefer IPB over all of them.

IPB is very clean cut, you know who is who, and it has great moderator functions, great profile settings, easy ACP to work on, and its easy to do board permissions. The one thing thats bad is their modding community is small, and it needs a few more years to escalate to what phpBB and vB's modding community is. One thing I also love is just installing a skin with the push of a button.

Anyway,
To rate my top 5 favorite software probobly would be:

1. IPB

2. Vbulletin

3. phpBB

4. SMF

5. MyBB

Noidall · Joined: 26 Sep 2008 Posts: 5

You can't really compare IPB/vB with phpBB. They are in totally different realms. (Paid vs unpaid)

IPB vs. vBulletin, I'd take IPB any day. You can't customize vBulletin like you can with IPB, and vBulletin's skinning engine is lacking at best.

IPB's security trumps vBulletin (as shown by their constant releases of security patches, opposed to IPB who releases security patches hardly as often [and not because they're lazy, or just don't update]).

phpBB is the best board available in terms of free software.

IPB > phpBB > vBulletin if I had to choose though. (Just can't get past vBulletin's moderating and admin CP)