mahesh2k 0 Report post Posted December 30, 2009 Friend of mine is going to purchase paid forum script as he wants to build community around his blog. So he needs forums,blog and news system software. As no other free forum software was capable of delivering this efficiently so he found IPB and VBulletin software. Now i have no experience to suggest anything to him. And his criteria are like need of blog software/news system to be embedded with forum software. IPB costs 145$, and i want to know what are the essential add-ons that are needed with it. I mean there is MySQL driver, Conversion service. Vbulletin Publishing Suite: 285$. (This includes most of the add-ons that are needed to be purchased with IPB). So now which one is good and if you have purchased any of these before, what more you added to software(i mean add-ons etc).Which one out of these two is better deal as per the requirement i have posted. Any suggestions ? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rvalkass 5 Report post Posted December 30, 2009 Before you leap in and buy either IPB or vBulletin, have you looked at Drupal? Drupal contains forums, blogging and a news system and is 100% open source and free. You can also get free modules to add any functionality you are missing compared to IPB and vBulletin. Certainly check it out if you want to save the cash.IPB include the MySQL driver for free with their $149.99 licence. Remember that the licence only lasts for 6 months and you will have to keep paying $25 every six months for ever afterwards if you want to keep getting updates (vital for security reasons). You'll then need their blogging software on top of that at a cost of $49.99 and $10 every six months. For news you'll probably want their Content system at a cost of $49.99 and a renewal of $15 every six months. That's a total one-off of $249.97 and a further $50 every six months afterwards.vBulletin is $285 but you get everything you need with no recurring payments. All updates for the major version you've licensed are free and you get a discount on licensing future versions. The support is also free whereas Invision place restrictions on how long you get free support for. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BCD 1 Report post Posted December 30, 2009 (edited) Hi, I don't know about those two, haven't used them. But since you are looking for a forum package, you can also have a look at fluxbb, if you haven't checked it out already.For a forum starting out around a blog with visitors, those two packages might be an overkill. I did try setting up PhpBB for a friend hosted on a shared hosting. The page rendering time is more compared to other simple-smaller scripts. Fluxbb is amazingly fast, its being actively developed and can be easily skinned. Some sites running on Fluxbb are utorrent , netvibes bittorrent.Edit: Sorry, I think I didn't read that carefully. You mean you want to start a blog and forum from scratch together. Then drupal might be the best solution. I have it running with "Advanced forums" module. Actually this module is itself an overkill for my simple forum. Edited December 30, 2009 by BCD (see edit history) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mahesh2k 0 Report post Posted December 30, 2009 @rvalkass, thanks for that. That short explanation ends up IPB from the list. I'll try to check with drupal before i suggest anything to him. I have tried drupal for short time as CMS but never with forum modules. So have to check those out before i can comment. @BCD, i'll try FluxBB and suggest him about that. But are you sure it has news and blog modules with forum software ? That is important for him. And yes, i'll try Drupal before suggesting that. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BCD 1 Report post Posted December 30, 2009 (edited) @BCD, i'll try FluxBB and suggest him about that. But are you sure it has news and blog modules with forum software ? That is important for him. And yes, i'll try Drupal before suggesting that.No, FluxBB is only a forum package. Actually I misunderstood the first time I read the main post. I thought the forum was being integrated onto an already existing blog. In that case, fluxbb is a good choice, as it can be easily integrated. But for starting both the forum and blog from scratch a complete CMS would be the better choice. So drupal would do good.I think, one should also think about what the site consists, does the main feature of the site is blog or the forum? Its quicker to get blog traffic than forum traffic. So forum feature on the site would not yield results quicker. May be it can be added, when the blog receives good traffic. Just my experience. Edited December 30, 2009 by BCD (see edit history) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mahesh2k 0 Report post Posted December 30, 2009 Yes, i agree that forum traffic is harder to get than blog traffic. But his requirement is something like some membership/invite based community for his niche. So i guess he has his plans to build community like site. Even i'm unsure about how he is visualizing the site and activity around. I was considering to suggest free packages but due to lack of good themes/modules & update issues i didn't recommended SMF and cause of security issues didn't suggested PhpBB.Drupal was one package which can be used as blog/news. Only thing i left that was forum module. So forum module is very important. I'll give it try on local computer using XAMPP before suggesting it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Soviet Rathe 1 Report post Posted December 30, 2009 I prefer IPB. VBulletin is good but there are MANY good mods for IPB. and there's several websites dedicated to making free mods and skins. not to mention that IPB is easier to work with. I bought my license once and never renewed it. basically all the "active license" is for is so you can get support and updates from them. which I don't really need because there's websites including T17 where I can get help if I need it IPB is pretty user friendly and clean looking but it's not as stable as VBulletin. (in my opinion)VBulletin is the most user friendly forum there is. but I found it hard to customize. and it's verity of mods are small. My suggestion to you would be get a hold of a nulled version. (not to use) but it's perfectly LEGAL to download a nulled copy of each forum software and install it on xampp and mess around with it. this will help you decide :)But a free solution would be phpbb, it's the closest thing you'll come to a paid software. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mahesh2k 0 Report post Posted December 31, 2009 Thanks soviet rathe. Even i was somewhat biased to SMF and IPB earlier. But when i compared all these forum packages, also i got the info from this thread (especially from rvalkass) about VB, so i guess i'm going to suggest him about Vbulletin & Drupal. Current 4th version is new in VBulletin and it has some nice themes.Even default themes which is easily customizable and have some good free themes. It has CMS and news system as well. Quite expensive but it's perfect package that i can suggest him about.Can't say anything about nulled version as it might tempt him to use that and he might get account banned. As far as i know, he' got no idea about XAMPP. So going to suggest him directly about these choices. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
deadmad7 4 Report post Posted January 3, 2010 Even if IBF 1.2 brings manny new good things, i still go for vBulletin. Especialy vB 3, witch i see that he hase greate things. I hope the price will be goon, when it will be finished.Abut support. I can tell you about IBF. NONE ! If you try to put a question to ibfplanet...if i ever see a help post...So, vBulletin my option. I'm looking for a buy ! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mahesh2k 0 Report post Posted January 3, 2010 Thanks for posting your views. I have heard about horrible support and response from IPB as well. I have suggested vB to him,let's see what he chooses for his own site. I'll update this thread with whatever decision he chooses and will give update why he selected that. In between, he also want to know what Mods are essential for VB, if you know any essential Mods then please post here. So that i can pass it to him. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
