Pros and Cons of an IP Board?

Hello people,

I'm contracting a professional web designer to build a custom skin for my site. Anyhow, the designer was asking if I ever thought about switching to an IP Board. Now to be honest, I actually like the looks of the IP board but I'm looking for pros and cons of switching to the IPB? I'm currently using 3.8.4.

Thanks,

Ray

 

Question for you: Do you pan on switching to xenforo when it comes out?

 

Nope.

 

Well, I've never personally switched to IPB from vBulletin, but I'm pretty much a vBulletin nut, so when I started my newer community, The Geek District - it was something new, an experience, and in truth, I'm still learning.

One of the biggest drawbacks for me, was having to learn everything again. IP.Content beats vBAdvanced hands down, but vBA is more usable. IP.Blogs, again, beat vB Blogs hands down, but again, vB Blogs are more usable. As for the forums/topics - they're relatively the same.

I still can't make mods or skins for IPB, but I love that there is such an extensive (even if fractured) modding community, some great sites for skins and mods, some of the pre made designs for IPB which are cheaper than most vB skins are truly stunning, almost custom skins in their own right.

 

I found it far more difficult to get paid technical help with ipb, and without that I cannot use it. In addition, it seems like really basic things such as UI does not have as much emphasis as coding for speed and reliability.

Example: There was a bug in the Watched Content which made it not function when certain conditions existed, that was eventually fixed in 3.1.2 as far as I know. It was a speed vs reliability issue as far as I could determine based on forum comments/Tracker comments/support ticket comments - but I am really not sure. What really bothered me was the fact that the problem existed, but there was no mention of it in the documentation nor otherwise published, nor was it stated the problem was fixed, which I find incredibly weird because people with problems could simply upgrade instead of using a support ticket, or living with the problem they may have. The only accurate state of the software is in the 'tracker' as far as I can tell.

Even today to see if there were replies made to topics I've posted in I need to do the following on the ips company forums:

• click big banner at the top
• glance at the notices in the upper right hand corner
• if there is a notice, that probably means there is a watched topic with new replies
• assuming there is a notice - I page down, page down, page down, then scroll way over to the far right, click on 'watched topics' tab, then they show up.
• if there is a watched topic of interest, click and read, repeat until done. If I make a mistake, and don't use the alt - left arrow to carefully back out to watched topics, I need to go back to the main page of threads, then page down, page down, page down, scroll way over to the right, and click Watched Topics to see them again.
• Because the watched topics bug was only recently fixed (latest version), I then need to click on home key on the keyboard, click on my name, then select My Content, then scan the first few pages of threads to see if any of them have any new replies.
• Then hit the home key to get back to the top, I click on the Notices, scan and make sure everything of interest has been read, then click somewhere on the page, which will close the the Notices window, but not clear the number of notices.
• I then need to click on the large main banner to reload the page, then that will reset the number of Notices to 0.
• If I care about New Content, I then click on that (it was fixed in 3.1.1 I believe)
• If I want to visit various forums, I can navigate them, no problem.

In vb, all of the above takes 1 mouse click to see all watched threads with new posts, or 1 mouse click to see new posts, available on every page at the top.


Could all of the UI be made far better with a new skin? Absolutely. Would it be a simple mouse click? I don't know. Does the ips company forum have a lot more going on (blogs/content/gallery/etc) than vb3.8? Absolutely!

I did spend several months trying to use the company forums, our hosted community, our purchased copy on our server, and most of all searching for tech help, which I could not find, not the type I was seeking. My guess is others will fare far better finding help, or are more technical than I.

 

Ya, that is one of the reason the designer wants to use the IP board is due to the cheaper custom skins. I'm not sure about the price difference but I may stick with vB if I can afford it.

 

I've used vBulletin for the majority of my forum career - I dabbled in IPB years ago and just recently started doing so again. I'm beginning to like IPB more than vB on a number of different levels. IPB as a whole feels much more seamless and lightweight. Its different pieces flow together very well.

IPB also has a much brighter future than vB. vB has done nothing but go downhill the last couple of years, and I don't see that changing any time soon.