Makestation
Paid forum software for 2014? - Printable Version

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Paid forum software for 2014? - Darth-Apple - December 11th, 2013

It's official, Makestation has now been around for roughly eight months as 2013 comes to a close. In a short time span, we've had one major forum software conversion and not one, but four full theme overhauls, but have grown nicely as a community, thanks to our ever dedicated members here. Big Grin

As the community has grown, it has become clear that neither SMF nor MyBB have really been able to fully meet our needs (although most will agree that MyBB has been great and has been quite customizable as well, making it a huge step above the old SMF days). In light of some of the feature requests as well as the growing community, I am now considering paid software for the community that would be much more powerful and bring back some coveted features such as user blogs, a new knowledgebase, better CMS-integration, and more.

Most likely, we'd be upgrading to Invision Power Board. It is significantly more expensive than Xenforo, but it has more of the features we would need, so I think it would be worth the additional expenses. Xenforo, however, isn't completely out of consideration. It's a good forum software option as well, although overall Invision Power Board seems more suited to the needs of the community and is more similar to what users are already used to. In either case, as with the last conversion, all users, posts, etc... will be converted seamlessly, so there won't be too many headaches with any conversion.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on the idea? Anyone have any feedback, questions, or suggestions? Be sure to vote in the poll!

P.S. we'll probably be bringing on some new moderators, or potentially even administrators for the next major site upgrade. I may throw in some competitions as well. Stay tuned!


RE: Paid forum software for 2014? - zoldos - December 27th, 2013

Cool! I've used IPB before and it's great. I haven't tried never versions, but as you said, it has the features you need. Good luck and I hope the forum continues to grow. Smile


RE: Paid forum software for 2014? - Warwick - December 29th, 2013

Why would you pay so much money on a script you can almost completely immitate with a free script, such as phpBB? Tell me something that IPB has that cannot be implemented with a phpBB modification/customization.


RE: Paid forum software for 2014? - Darth-Apple - December 30th, 2013

(December 29th, 2013 at 4:32 PM)Warwick Wrote: Why would you pay so much money on a script you can almost completely immitate with a free script, such as phpBB? Tell me something that IPB has that cannot be implemented with a phpBB modification/customization.

Thank you for the feedback!

The price of IP.Board would definitely be a bit hefty on my pocketbook, but ever since the launch of Makestation, I've taken it very seriously to try to make it a success, so if professional software will serve the community well, I'm all for the idea. To be fair, MyBB has served us pretty well so far, and the customization potential of it is particularly nice (we are using two custom plugins and a custom theme at the moment as well), so as a forum software solution, MyBB has not lacked anything. As far as the non-forum features, those have been a bit more difficult to implement.

The main advantage that Invision Power Board has over MyBB is that they have several high quality addons such as IP.Content and IP.Blog available as well. For example, I have yet to find a good user blogs plugin for MyBB that does not have a bad reputation for security issues, and I think it would be great to re-implement the user blogs functionality. (By the way, if anyone reading this happens to find a good user blogs plugin, don't hesitate to let me know. Tongue ) I was also intending to do a better job integrating a content management system/blog with the community, but so far, my custom MyBB CMS addon has been a bit behind on development due to my busy schedule, and is a bit of a mess at the moment. Overall, IP.Board already has a lot of great addons to expand the functionality of the makestation forum, so it would not only save me a lot of time on development for more custom plugins, but would also allow the community to expand significantly as well.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback and for voting in the poll! It is much appreciated.

zoldos Wrote:Cool! I've used IPB before and it's great. I haven't tried never versions, but as you said, it has the features you need. Good luck and I hope the forum continues to grow. Smile

Glad you like the idea. Thank you for voting in the poll! What is the most recent version of Invision Power Board that you have experience with?