Over at Dorm Earning, I wrote a four part series all about creating a forum. One of those posts had to do with picking the right forum software. Now, I was able to give a general opinion about two out of three simply because I have them both. I’ve used vBulletin and I have used phpBB and both of them are spectacular. That didn’t use to be the case. The paid software is vBulletin and it’s a great software. The free software is phpBB and that, as well, is a great software now that it is in version three. I’m going to go over the cost benefits as well as which one I would recommend.

First and foremost, when you are creating a forum, I’d recommend really determining what you want to do. With my science forum, I bought a vBulletin license because it was considered the best. Now, would I still do this if I had known about phpBB3? The answer to that is no. Had I known that phpBB3 was coming out, I would have stuck with that simply because it would have saved me close to $200.00 that I could have used for promotion. Now, why do I say this? Because, phpBB3 is good enough that it rivals that of vBulletin. My friend over at Jackuul Empire absolutely LOVES phpBB. He considers version 3 to be the vBulletin killer.

As for aesthetics…I still think that phpBB is about the same as vB. The one thing that I will say about vB is that it has the ability to have a sidebar, at least, that’s what I’ve seen in a lot of their themes. Go take a look at Science Chats. As you can see, there is that “Affiliates and Sponsors” section. If you look at Debateful, we don’t have that. I like that, so when it comes to, at least in this case, the aesthetics of the forum, I’d have to go with vB. But, don’t get me wrong, some of the themes on phpBB that I have seen are spectacular.

Now…The final thing that I want to touch on is the Admin Panel. Which one is better, which one is nicer, and which one just makes me grin? The answer: phpBB. It’s more organized, it looks nicer, and just looking at, it makes me grin. On the top, it provides a series of buttons to take you to different other buttons that are in that section. On vBulletin, it’s all one long side panel. That’s cool, but when you’re in a hurry like I am sometimes, I don’t have to really look at the side bar. I just want to click click click and be done with it. The free software offers that. However, vBulletin is STILL good.

Now, if I were to make another forum, which software would I use? I’d go with phpBB. They’re free, so it saves me the necessary money I can use for marketing. They have a great admin panel and finally, they are open source, so they are quick to get new updates, new themes, new mods, everything, because they are open source. Firefox is open source and people love it. Linux is open source and people love it. phpBB is open source and I’m beginning to really choose that over vBulletin. So, if you’re looking to make a forum and you don’t have all that much cash, devote that money to growth of the site and don’t bother spending over $150 on vBulletin.

It takes a lot out of me to write these blog posts. Buy me a beer to cool me off!