Why I Moved From vbulletin To PHPbb to XenForo

You might take this article as a Vbulletin Vs PHPbbOrXenForo Vs Vbulletin. By either means, this article will be my journey between the 3 Most PopularPHP Forum Software. I will start My Pros and Cons of these forums. I’ll like to point out that all of these Forums: Vbulletin, PHPbb and XenForo are really fantastic software. No partial or prejudice thoughts shall be brought forward. This article is written upon my utter experiences, research and use.

Why I Recommend Vbulletin

While Researching the Best Forum Software in 2014,I stumbled upon Vbulletin , the world leader in Forum and community publishing software (at that time) .It was Launched in 2000 by Jelsoft Enterprises And from then it had gained reputation and trust from Commercial, Business and Personal Representative. With Our 100,000 Forums/Communities built on Vbulletin, its convincing that This Forum Software has something splendid to Offer. To name a few: Bodybuilding, Zynga, EA Sports , Sony,Steam Houston Texas , Nasa and More are acquaintances of Vbulletin. Let’s get deeper into why i recommend Vbulletin.

1 .Robust and Diversify

While Vbulletin is the main Forum Software at the time writing this Article, it’s also the leader in Development of Plugins and add-ons .Therefore,A lot of styles, themes and mods are available for Different Purposes Similar to WordPress.

• Excellent moderation control

Yes! That’s the Only Advantage I can Honestly give

Why I do not Recommend Vbulletin & Why I Left Vbulletin

Vbulletin Was the forum back then. It was in the spot light, actually dominating the Forum and Community industry with 3.8 Version Until The Founders/Best Developers of Vbulletin Left.This Cause a lot of controversies with the Version 4.xx. New staffs, marketing Manager, and Customer care Representative was emplyed. Everything had changed. Review FromTrustPiliot

After 2 years of trying and the investment of a lot of time and money today I will be killing my vbulletin V4 software.

This must be the most hackable and hacked software of any description.

During the time this has been on my site the volume of hack postingst has crashed the original Godaddy server and the server of someone who professed to be an expert, charged me lots of money and then 4 days after it went live on his preferred server took the site down due to the hacking.

My PersonalReview On Vbullein:

Bad Coding and Scripts

comparing Vbulletin 3.8x to 4.xx, the primary codes are obviously Altered by the new developers who mingled with the Codes, makes it more server intensive and laggy. There are over 2000 open bugs. Shawn the Owner OfDigitalPointcompletely moved fromVbulletin to XenForo because of the buggy Issues, He even contributed in fixing some. I wonder why Most of theVbulletinOwners are not updating to 4.x for a Extra $209 instead, they are staying with the somewhat less-bug Version 3.8.

Vbulletin : No Refund

It is not 100% Sure that Vbulletin will work fluently on all Web Hosting /Servers. There was an incident where a man bought Vbulletin For 400 usd, he was trying to install it on his host but failed in disgust. He contacted Vbulletin support numerous times with very long delay to no response at all … He filed for a refund and got this message:

No refunds will be offered for the Software once it has been downloaded. No
refunds will be offered for the purchase of other vBulletin products.

Not User Friendly, Not For Newbies

As mention earlier,Vbulletinis a Robust and diversified Forum yet it comes with customization and set ups that are too advanced for the not so experienced users. I know the more you see the more you become frustrated, prior to Vbulletin Back office, there are a lot of things and requirement. You need to Set up before your Forum can go live. Even if Your FirstVbulletinForum goes live you will somehow come across a number of errors and slowness, error messages all over the place and missing integral functions from previous versions.

Easily Hackable and Spam-able

VbulletinOwners Can tell you, Spam, Spam and Even More Spams every day, it’s like this Software was prone to spammers when I was using it. I can tell you ,at an appointed time when I installed Vbulletin On My web Host, I got Up to 60 Comment Spams, Articles Spam , Blog Spams and when I removed the CMS, they found a way And Spam the Threads, I had to Deactivate Registration, Did They Still spam? in spite of The Captchas that was supposed to prevent spammer from registering was not sufficient enough. The Branding at the bottom of the Forum attracts more spammers and help tools like Scrapbox.*

At one incident in time:Attackers appear to have compromised tens of thousands of Web sites using a security weakness in sites powered by the forum software vBulletin. 35,000 sites were hacked via this vulnerability.

If You Install Vbulletin and did not delete the /install folder, then you are at risk of getting hack

Vbulletin is overpriced!

The Speculation about vbulletin is besthad come to an end with the enormous Price Per license and Upgrade fees, why Vbulletin has to be so costly? Is it worth it?. Comparing Vbulletin to the other Forums, XenForo is a lot cheaper with much more benefits, which will discuss later in this article. The latest Version Of Vbulletin Is 5.X costly than all the forums, which cost a whopping 400 USD!

>US $249.00 Per License

>US $209.00 to upgrade

>US $399.00 for Mobile Suite Bundle

>US $359.00 to Upgrade

>Plus 79% Of the Add-ons are Paid Versions 

.So what about the XenForo Price?

$140 Per License

>Free Upgrade

>89% Of Add ons are free

This Is one of the main disadvantage about Vbulletin. That was the reason why I left Vbulletin.

Couple Days later I was On Google.
these are all the things that I was searching for:

• best php forum
• best forum software 2015
• top best forum software

with all these Successions I had come across a really admirably and Desirable Free Open Source ForumPHPbbgot my attention

My Journey At PHPbb

My journey For PHPbb was not so long as compared to Vbulletin and XenForo. However, it was a time well spent developing and exploring the Features and applications

Why I chose PHPbb in the first place?

Power of Features Out-of-the-Box,

Although PHPbb wasn’t a forum with a lot of Plugins and Mods, at the same time, it has some really good Built in Features that’s very Attractive

Free Open Source PHP Forum

Due to this factor; a lot of people are gravitated to this forum because of the“free” Forum.. Oh well, it was worth it for a free open source.

Phpbb wasn’t a great experience for me, maybe because I was rushing for something that was less expensive and user friendly, However, not only it was easy to install, but it was very difficult to modify and Configured Third Party Application.

What Really Forced Me Away From PHPbb?

SEO Friendliness:As search engine optimization is concerned, the ease and effectiveness were very incompetent.

User Engagement:The Little time I moved over to PHPbb, I was getting a lot of Complaints by My visitors saying that the Graphical interface was misunderstanding and hard to navigate. It was really frustrated because my new visitor didn’t know how to create New Threads,etc. It was limited in terms of productivity.

Here We go again with the Spams!: This forum was no different from Vbulletin. Spammers somehow targeted my website while I was installing! I couldn’t believe I would get so many threads spammed even with the spam stopper on. Oh well, I Expected that from A free Forum . Even so, Vbullentin was a mess

PPHbbis a really great Forum for Small and personal uses only. I don’t recommend Using PHPbb if you are running a business.

Well, it’s time for the beast!

My Ultimate XenForo Review

TheXenforo Forum SoftwareIs completely different and very superior to the other Forums. I meant -Vbulletin and PHPbb because those’re the only ones I have tested.

To Begin with, the Slogan ofXenforopractically describes the forum-Intuitive, Social, Engaging and Fast. XenForo brings a fresh outlook to forum software.

Let’s begin with the Pros then the cons, oh wait. I don’t think there are Cons

XenForo Is Flexible and 100% Customizable

Have You Ever used Windows 8 Metro style Interface? in-comparison it is very similar in terms of user navigation, user Interface, user prospect, and user modification.

Not Only, it uses Rich and attractive colors, but it also utilizes powerful tools and resources that can simply change anything to your needs.From the Root Templates to The mere Color and Notches.

Xenforo Is Really Stable

The code and scripts of that SaidXenforo is overall clean and with no doubt multi- compatible with all third part applications .With Assurance, you’re safely and Privacy is in the arms of Competent Developers.

SEO Built-in, No need for sitemap

With the human readablesemantic HTMLwithembedded microdata, Urls are already implemented in the very core of your installation. You don’t need to pay much of a hassle with Search Engine Optimization. XenForo has friendly URLs that makes it easier to perform better in SERP. Unlike Vbulletin, that doesn’t have a Proper SEO Aspect. It is hard to Rank high within Google.Moreover.(Although url structure doesn’t do such an impact on SEO) Vbulletin creates page after page of duplicate content with duplicate title tags and Duplicate Descriptions that can get your penalize by Google.

However, XenForo is the cure for this, if you really want to perform A+ with SEO then I Recommend XenForo

XenForo Awesome Add-ons!

If you look at the Resources,Xenforo Has over 3000+ Addonsand guess what?

Most of them are free, perhaps, 90% are.

The Support Team Is Priceless

The Developers are active and proactive to assist customers on behalf on any issue or inquire. I Posted on their Forum, In about 2 minutes, I saw a response

Social Engagement

Hve you ever wonder why when someone visits your website for the first time and doesn’t come back?

Well, I can guarantee that XenForo has the solution for that. The Reward system is fantastic. It’s like winning. You want more. Letting a visitor be active in your forum, reducing your bounce rate.

The Likes and The Integration are a next plus. Intuitive likes and profile engagements between users are intriguing.Giving Members Rewards for their contribution and Posting.

The Facebook, google and twitter integration, let people sign up for your forum with ease.

Xenforo Is Versatile

Xenforo Infrastructures has a way to utilize the thousands of Add-on and robust multifunction built in features to create any kind of Forum, Community or even a Marketplace,

For Example,Digital Point Forumis currently Running XenForo, One of the Most Successful and Highly traffic Forum

The Bottom Line. If You do a query saying Vbulletin vs Xenforo or PHP Vs Vbulletin You will Most likely get similar judgements on these forums.

All the best on Your purpose of visit!