Nekochan Net

I've been kicking around the idea of moving to vBulletin at some point. Is there any interest in this, or is everyone satisfied with phpBB3 for the most part? Would entail me paying out $180 to get the license, but if it's something that is preferred, I certainly go that route.

It is the content, not the medium that I am interested in.

What would be the benefits if nekochan changed?

That's sort of what I want to find out. I've often heard that phpBB based forums are not held in high esteem, and I just want to make sure we're on a platform everyone is happy with.

I'm happier with phpBB than vB.

Nekochan runs fine - why mess with something that works?

vB tends to scale better in my experience, and for those early years when the phpBB developers seemed to have missed 99% of coding practice and not getting SQL injected via every single file, it was a far more stable and secure option. At this point, phpBB has matured to the point that it's not a liability to run it, and it's free and seems to be working fine for Nekochan.

vB might be a little faster, scale a little better, or be a bit cleaner-coded, but unless there's a plugin you want or something, I don't see a reason to spend $180 and try to do a migration.

I helped administrate on another VB forum last year (but was later DDos'ed by 7chan and shut down) and it always seemed that whenever there was an update, our custom skin/theme broke.
Don't know if it was because of us or what but I never really liked it.

i second the 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' sentiment. seen too many forums change their junk around and achieve nothing of value. skins are another non-value add.

however if it's become a drag maintaining it, then do as you need to do.

Everything's working fine with phpBB3 from an administrative standpoint - it's even faster now running under php-5.3.0. If everyone else is happy with it I'll keep things as-is

and if you're happy, then i'm happy!

Perfectly happy with what we have now. As porter said, what matters is the content, and not so much the medium, so as long as you don't have any security/administration issues with phpBB, I don't see any reason to change it.

second that.

i used both as an admin as well and both have a little something missing here and there but overall i more matter of taste i thiink.
anyway i like it the way it is.

better spend the $180 on some sgi stuff

I mod a site with vBulliten and upgrading between versions definitely causes weird issues. I like how the forum is now

I also like the forum as it is currently. Plus, vBulletin has its own issues.

I am anti-vBulletin, only because nearly every vBulletin admin has their forum set to require you to login for attachments and images. Even if I'm a registered user it's annoying to always login to see content that might solve an issue I'm researching.

Now you mention this, I wonder how Google index those pages.

Probably treats crawlers as a separate class of user and serves them special content - phpBB3 does this as well (look at the "Registered Users" at the bottom of the forum's main page).

Everything runs smoothly from my point of view. Why change, especially if there is a cost.

Neko, my advice is to keep the phpBB stuff. Don't waste time and money on something we don't have experience with. I'm very happy with phpBB as it runs smooth as silk.

I never felt comfortable with vBulletin. For me, it's got way too many buttons and sections and menus. So yeah, keep it as it is. Plus the fact that phpBB is free and vBulletin is not should be enough incentive to stay on the current option.

And I see that Gallery3 has become Gallery2 again! Thanks nekoneko!

there's also invision board as a commercial alternative but as i said already i wouldn't vote for a change ...