Burning Board: Thoughts?

A lot of it I think had to do with the fact that it's German - hard to get support, some options may have been hard to find. One friend tolerated it for awhile until it self destructed somewhere around the 100k post range. That didn't lead to confidence in them though he had a lot of adventures with other software.

A more personal experience was simply trying out various trial editions of softwares after moving from Avid Gamers to a hosting company for the forum portion of our OpenRPG game, back in ~2001-2002 or so. OGame is probably their current flagship forum - not aware of a larger one. I remember it was just impossible to customize, though - I think it was Discuss! - was even worse. "Well, we can pay $90 and it may have that feature..." "Or we can pay NOTHING and get it anyway!"

 

Ugh, that sounds horrible. English is most definitely not their primary language - and a board self-destructing is never good.

The grammatical errors on their website (alone) are a major turn-off for me. If I'm going to be purchasing a software script, I would want to know that they can speak English not only fluently, but in the correct manner. It seems as if this is an impossibility, however.

 

Was your friend able to convert all those posts to another forum format, or did he lose them in the meltdown?

 

That sounds like a horror. As Chris stated, to see all those grammatical errors was a turn-off. Also, the experience seems as a nightmare! =[

If you are going to make a script available for public, I think, you should be aware about the nationalities that might surface and might buy/download your script, therefore you'd need to have a very capable staff to handle this. A German and a Spanish user, I don't see this ending well.

 

If you can release a professional script with spelling and grammatical errors, you could certainly release one with typos and bugs in the code.

 

This, is true.

 

It was lost.

I should remind that we're talking about an age ago in Internet terms, but my personal opinion of most alternative forum software is - you need to bring something new to the table.

There are a set of main players - vB, phpBB, SMF, Drupal, Word/BBPress, PunBB, IPB, and Community Server. If you're not one of those, what do you have to offer?

MyBB is a fresh take on a full-featured GPL-licensed forum. Considering the typical attitude of phpBB's developer team, this is actually a selling point.
Vanilla is a fresh take on forums period.

I see something like Burning Board - typical forum layout, typical - frequently even substandard - feature sets (one click moderation is still one at a time moderation) - and at some point I just have to wonder why.

 

I'd have to agree with you - it's "old" news, so to speak.

 

Good point, Vekseid. Burning Board is just "there" and really brings nothing new to the industry, and therefore has no great appeal.

 

And they aren't exactly "new" to the forum industry. You'd think they'd make some excellent changes (i.e. those that would meet today's exacting standards).

 

What kind of development team does Burning Board have? Maybe they're so busy with support that they have no time to work on their product.

 

Wll look at their community - it's averaging a stellar 75 posts per day O_o

 

Yes! Talk about a superb amount, eh?

 

There is an island in the west of Europe. It was a world empire a long time ago. You might have heard of it - it's called Great Britain.
And in that strange land, where people drive on the wrong side of the road and where the English language was formed.
In that strange land you could find words with strange spelling. Like colour, dialogue, catalogue, realisation and of course, customisation.

And since a lot of countries, like Germany, where WoltLab is, teach British spelling and grammar - that is what many German people and companies use.

As for their grammar mistakes (I haven't checked)...
I find that for the most part, people who speak more than one language on a very good or near perfect level, don't tend to laugh at the mistakes of others because they can appreciate how difficult writing long texts, manuals, etc. in a language that is not native to you can be.

Having said all that - I have never used Burning Board nor do I plan to.:frown:

This post was brought to you in perfect British English spelling.*
*with the exception of the American spelling examples. :lol:

 

The only aspect of this script that I'm a bit fond of is the administrative interface - clean and somewhat organized. When compared to the front-end interface, it's a bit more visually appealing.

 

Looks like a pretty impressive forum software.

 

I actually have a lifetime license to Burning Board, have been a member since 1999 and been a user of it since that time. I have no use for it currently so I have an idle license. I love the product but don't like the fact that not many modifications are released for it, and when they are released, most of the time they are horrible and are untested.

 

What are your thoughts on the development of the script over the years? Have you been happy with the changes made to the software, or do they leave little to be desired?

 

In all honesty, they have went down hill. They take almost 3 months to release a fix for the product which prevents sql injection or something. Development was great at first then slowly they stopped being so great. They definately leave little to be desired.

 

i worked with burning board 2 for a few years and to that time it was a good forum software for a low price (about 25 euro) and tons of free addons. but that is several years ago and their first release of the third generation (wich was completely rewritten), for me was the cause to change the software forever.

btw, the only cause woltlab is the leading forum software in germany is because they also provide a free "light" version of the board. basically the same stuff but much fewer functions.