Forum solution

cougarclaws

cougarclaws

Señor Member
Jul 14, 2008
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Houston, TX
I'm in charge of creating a website for an organization I volunteer for and I'm looking for the best forum software solution given some parameters. Since I've never run a forum for my business, and only have admin experience on phpbb and moderator experience on vBulletin, I'm not really sure what other options I should look at.

The two major parameters:
The major problem in my organization's community in the past has been we can get less than 50% of people to actually register and participate on our forum. Since I'm looking to make it as easy as possible for them to register and participate, I'm thinking there's got to be a good Facebook Connect solution. Ideally someone logged into facebook could start commenting on the forum using their real name and it syncs up their facebook profile picture and therefore removing the need to register.

The other major consideration is that our organization is a private community. I started looking into vBulletin & its facebook app which looked great because everyone is already on Facebook and people could participate on the forum without leaving fb. But after talking to a vBulletin sales rep, it doesn't look like that's going to be a good solution for us because the vBulletin facebook app is really more geared towards open online communities - it shares what conversations you're participating in in people's news feeds. That wouldn't be ideal for us, as we wish to keep a lot of our conversations private.

So I like the idea of something that integrates logging in and participating with facebook but we don't want everything we talk about showing up on newsfeeds.

Can anyone recommend some solutions I should research more?
 


fwiw, I have always enjoyed SMF more than any other software out there, and I have posted on all of the major 5.

I know it's a breeze on the backend too.
 
Invision Power Board is a popular one.

vBulletin is great check their forums almost everything has a setting so maybe you can turn off sharing and just allow the signup. I've reg on vBulletin with fb and it didn't post to my wall
 
If the intended audience isn't technical, you might consider something like phpfox. It has it's issues, but the fact that it looks and acts like facebook, and allows people to sign in using their facebook credentials, might increase your chances that it gets used.
 
4HardSale said:
Xenforo.

Created by the guys who started VB.
Click to expand...

I would also recommend checking out XenForo to see if it meets your needs. It is now one of the best forum options in my opinion. I have switched my old vBulletin and Invision Power Board installs over to it.

vBulletin 4 is kinda crappy and Internet Brands has treated many long time vBulletin customers terribly since taking over the company.
 
Unarmed Gunman said:
Out of curiosity, why do you like Xenforo better than IPB?
Click to expand...

After watching many of their Vimeo demonstrations, then buying and testing it, I just liked the way many things worked in XenForo over IPB.

XenForo's videos on Vimeo

I can't even remember all of the specific differences that I liked more, I have been free of vB and IPB for over a year now.

I know that I liked the moderation tools and spam removal system better in XenForo.

Moderation Tools in XenForo on Vimeo
Cleaning-Up Spam With XenForo on Vimeo

I thought the the upload/attachment system is better and easier for users. I believe IPB still only allows 1 upload at a time while XenForo allows multiple pictures/files to be selected and makes inserting either full images or thumbnails into a post very easy.

If you skip to about 7:45 in the "Notices" video it shows some nice visual things that can be done with their notices system.

XenForo is easier on server resources than the other big two. The owner of Digital Point posted a screen shot on the XenForo website of his test install taking 1/3 as many queries, 1/2 the memory, and about 1/6 as much time as his vBulletin 4 install to do something simple.

It is probably mostly personal preference/opinion, but XenForo is my favorite so far after using UBB, phpBB, SMF, MyBB, IceBB, PunBB, FluxBB, vBulletin, and IPB over the years.
 
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Netphase said:
After watching many of their Vimeo demonstrations, then buying and testing it, I just liked the way many things worked in XenForo over IPB.

XenForo's videos on Vimeo

I can't even remember all of the specific differences that I liked more, I have been free of vB and IPB for over a year now.

I know that I liked the moderation tools and spam removal system better in XenForo.

Moderation Tools in XenForo on Vimeo
Cleaning-Up Spam With XenForo on Vimeo

I thought the the upload/attachment system is better and easier for users. I believe IPB still only allows 1 upload at a time while XenForo allows multiple pictures/files to be selected and makes inserting either full images or thumbnails into a post very easy.

If you skip to about 7:45 in the "Notices" video it shows some nice visual things that can be done with their notices system.

XenForo is easier on server resources than the other big two. The owner of Digital Point posted a screen shot on the XenForo website of his test install taking 1/3 as many queries, 1/2 the memory, and about 1/6 as much time as his vBulletin 4 install to do something simple.

It is probably mostly personal preference/opinion, but XenForo is my favorite so far after using UBB, phpBB, SMF, MyBB, IceBB, PunBB, FluxBB, vBulletin, and IPB over the years.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info +rep
 
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