Forum Software, vBulletin, etc.

**scarab** · Jan 23rd, 2012, 12:02 AM

Dear Fastlaner,

Recently the forum software was updated. As a result of this update, hundreds of hours of customization was LOST. At the moment and in the near future, we will have to deal with the "default" installation. If you are an entrepreneur and looking to host a forum to support your business/service/product, I highly recommend you AVOID THE WORST FORUM SOFTWARE IN EXISTENCE -- vBulletin.com. For an alternative, I recommend XenForo -- I am currently scheduling time to move the forum to this new software and abandoning vBulletin. The Fastlane lesson? Any time the web is littered with customers who are pissed, fed-up, and experience inconvenience and you repeatedly ignore them, you have a great OPPORTUNITY as it defines a NEED -- the folks at Xenforo have taken advantage of the blatant BLOAT and user "unfriendliness" of vBulletin. Stay tuned...

~ MJ

MJ,
I'm sorry to hear about your problems with vBulletin. I did some research into forum software as I am going to implement some forums on sites I own.

The general consensus I have found is that vBulletin 3.8.7 is (was) the last best version of vBulletin. Apparently, new owners took over the company or the brand of vBulletin and came out with version 4+ which I noticed that your current forum is.

This version is considered by many site owners to be inferior to 3.8.7, possibly due to the problems you ran into. As a result, there is a pretty hot market for 3.8.7 licenses. This is why really large forums such as the Warrior Forum for internet marketers, blackhatworld, etc. still run on old 3.8.7 licenses.

I have heard good things about phpBB, though I also hear it may have scaling issues with larger forums. I will check out Xenforo, thanks for the tip.

**BeachBoy** · Jan 23rd, 2012, 08:55 AM

started a thread about it too: MJ vs vbulletin

I like vbulletin, but it's a PITA to go from 3.x to 4.x, but if you stick with one version you're ok

**CommonCents** · Jan 23rd, 2012, 12:55 PM

So the problems are with migration/upgrade only or does the new version have problems too? I am working on a project that will need forums so I'd be starting fresh.