Another Forums thread

[rock]

My company is finally listening to me and looking to implement some forums for tech support and to get rid of our old mailing lists. It'll start small, but we have like 500,000 users, so could grow pretty large over time.

The task of recommending the right software falls to me. We'll be administering what we can, buy prefer not to host it on our servers.

I do like the vBulletin they're using here. I was a mod on another board (now defunct) that used phpBB. I liked that and it was pretty configurable, but I'm worried about scalability. Once we had a few hundred users there, it seemed to get a bit bogged down. The current opinion of my boss is anything using MySQL would be fine with him.

So, what's the best forum software? Commercial is okay, after all this is for a software company.

And I'm not in charge of finding the host, but recommendations there too would be nice.

[Bearded Kirklander]

Invision Power Board has a Forum Hosting service that looks pretty interesting:

http://www.invisionzone.com/

I've thought about it for a fun side project, but have not yet taken the plunge.

[ua549]

I highly recommend vBulletin. It handles medium sized boards such as SharkyForums with a few hundred concurrent online users as well as large boards such as HowardForums with 5,000+ concurrent users (283,000+ members). Software cost is not significant at less than $200. Communications circuits will be your most significant cost.

I doubt that phpBB can handle the number of users you have.

[rock]

Invision Power Board has a Forum Hosting service that looks pretty interesting:

http://www.invisionzone.com/

I've thought about it for a fun side project, but have not yet taken the plunge.

I've never used IPB boards -- do you know of any commercial sites up there? $75/month doesn't seem too bad, but I have no idea what the bandwidth requirements will be until we get started.

[Bearded Kirklander]

Sorry, rock. I'm about as in the dark as a n00b could be. Perhaps contacting the site folks and asking them if they could point you to some commercial sites that they are hosting would be a good place to start.

I'd help more if I could, but I'm just not well versed in this stuff yet.

[rock]

Thanks. I'll poke around their forum some tomorrow. It's actually laid out similarly to what we have in mind.

[Thermo]

Snitz with a sql db.

[ace727861986]

My suggestion would be vbulletin also. I am a large fan of vBulletin and own a license my self.

The largest message boards on the internet that have been up for several years do not have a half million users. I am not saying its not possible (and yes I have seen sites that have over 3 million users) but it is rare.

If you wish go look at this site http://www.big-boards.com/ it gives a run down of the largest message boards on the internet and explains some of the hardware that a site of this size will need.

I doubt that phpBB can handle the number of users you have.

As for this comment, I am a lover of vbulletin but for some reason I do not hold this comment to be true. Free or not phpBB is a VERY nice bulletin board and has the ability to handle a LOT more than you would expect. If you look on the site I pasted above the largest message board on the internet is using phpBB something that vBulletin can't even claim.

EDIT: Found some statistics of Gaia online (they are using phpBB).

Who is Online - In total there are 26731 users online :: 22759 Registered, 1932 Hidden and 2040 Guests

Gaia has 305,332,539 articles posted with 2,201,897 registered users.
Most users ever online was 32,499 on Sun Mar 27, 2005 6:24 pm

So in my humble opionion the above statement made by UA would be false . <3 UA.

[ace727861986]

I've never used IPB boards -- do you know of any commercial sites up there? $75/month doesn't seem too bad, but I have no idea what the bandwidth requirements will be until we get started.

It all depends on how many users you have and how image heavy your site is. 75 a month would get you almost a dedicated server from a place like servermatrix.com (last i checked their cheapest hosting was around 90 bux for the lowend dedicated server).

Personally I have a few websites with about 10-15 of my friends that post fairly regularly and I avg between 100-300MB a month. Some more some less.

[ua549]

I'm not sure, but I was under the impression that SharkyForums used to use phpBB. Watever that original software was, it could not handle multiple users attempting to post to the same thread at the same time. If it happened, the thread would go to that great bit bucket in the sky never to be seen again. The amazing thing is that with only a hundred or two users online at the same time, the problem happened frequently.

[rock]

I'm not sure, but I was under the impression that SharkyForums used to use phpBB. Watever that original software was, it could not handle multiple users attempting to post to the same thread at the same time. If it happened, the thread would go to that great bit bucket in the sky never to be seen again. The amazing thing is that with only a hundred or two users online at the same time, the problem happened frequently.

Yeah, we had problems like that at one point on the phpBB board I was on too. It took a while to figure out the forum software was the problem and not the users. Well, usually.

[ace727861986]

If it was phpBB it must have been a REALLY REALLY old version of it because to my knowledge I have never even heard of anything like this happening. I would have never even thought of a forum having problems like that. But as of right now phpBB has no real afaik problems. Plus they are getting ready to launch a new version.

What was the version if it was phpBB i would be curious to see it.

[rock]

The largest message boards on the internet that have been up for several years do not have a half million users. I am not saying its not possible (and yes I have seen sites that have over 3 million users) but it is rare.

BTW, we have over half a million users of our software, but I don't expect anywhere near that load on the support forums for a number of reasons. I wouldn't be surprised to get into the thousands pretty quickly, though.

[ace727861986]

Yeah any of the major bulletin board providers (phpBB, IPB, or vBulletin) would be fine.

I would suggest vbulletin though.

If you don't mind me asking what kinda software you are providing

[rock]

Yeah any of the major bulletin board providers (phpBB, IPB, or vBulletin) would be fine.

I would suggest vbulletin though.

If you don't mind me asking what kinda software you are providing

Thanks -- looks like vBulletin is getting the highest recommendations.

As for our software, I've generally never thought it appropriate to talk about the products in detail here, but at a high level one product line are numerical libraries and the other is a 4GL development environment.