Forum Software

[kchusker_chris]

So I am building a site for a startup company here in KC. They are wanting to implement a on premise hosted forum for discussion/feedback on the product they sell.

 

I am on the fence between IP.Board and vBulletin. I develop .NET/SQLServer, so neither really satisfies that. I haven't been able to find any comparable .NET solutions so I'm essentially down to these two. Are there any I'm missing?

 

Anyone have an opinion on either? I've never really participated in a vBulletin board, but it seems to be the dominant product out there. I don't mind the IP.Board we use here at all, and it seems fairly flexible in regards to the theme.

[zoogs]

Good question. I've scant experience with phpBB, and a fair amount with Invision. vBulletin, I have only ever been a user of. I don't know if there are any .NET based forums. I'm not even too sure what that means! I guess it has to do with the database interface used, and these use, what? MySQL?

 

I would agree that vBulletin seems to be the dominant product. I don't know if I would be too qualified to answer, given that I've never looked under the hood with vBulletin. (Also, after doing some reading, I wonder if my impression of vBulletin is five years too dated. IPB may be trending up in esteem these days.)

 

I've had my share of frustrations with working on the theme in Invision, but it's been a learn-as-you-go deal in that area. Hard to say if it is an area where IPB has shortcomings, or if it's just my lack of know-how. Probably the latter.

[AR Husker Fan]

What platform will you be building on - Windows or Linux? Do you have a particular set of minimum features you want? Assuming the platform is Windows, there's an open-source package called Snitz. Admittedly, it's bare bones compared to commercial products, but since it's open source it's fully customizable. There is a .Net beta of the software that is actually pretty feature complete. You might want to take a look at it. Oh, and it never hurts to be able to tell you boss that you found a free solution.

 

Snitz

 

.Net Beta of Snitz

[kchusker_chris]

We'll be on Windows. We're primarily after the forum, blogs, and mobile versioning (mainly site, but apps would be nice). They are anticipating around 10,000 users, maybe 750 of them fairly active by year end. Money isn't really and issue, it's very well funded.

 

I'm kind of leaning towards IP.Board - a lot of it having to do w/ the skins out there at: http://www.ipbforumskins.com/

 

They would save me a ton of time.

[AR Husker Fan]

Yeah, Snitz is probably not a good option then. It's basic - easily modded, but you'd have to put in the time (although there are a lot of community mods). Nothing comparable to skins at all, and I don't recall a mobile mod for it at all. Good luck.