Now that it's been decided that we will be hosting our own forums come the yukupoccalypse, I've been doing some "shopping". I think the best option we have is to go with one of the following:
vBulletin - It's reliable, highly customisable, and we don't have to pay for it again after the one-off payment. That original payment buys the forum software and allows us to use it forever. We would pay $30 for updates if we chose to have them. The one-off payment is $160.
vBulletin is NOT a forum host like ezboard and yuku, it is software which we would buy and host ourselves.
PHPBB - Again, totally customisable, the current version has been rewritten to be very reliable, many mods are available, it would integrate seamlessly with the Guilder's Gallery, we could add a chat (see below), and most importantly it is FREE!
So one might immidietly go for the PHPBB, however the most important feature of vBulletin is that it is made by a professional company and therefore has good support. But like I said, Jeremy is good with PHP (he did the Guilder's Gallery) and would be able to correct any issues we had with the software.
As you may have guessed, I'm in support of the PHPBB option. If any of you are still unsure, Ezconvert may persuede you. Yes! We can actually rip the guild forum as it is, along with all accounts (although passwords wuld need to be recreated,) messeges, individual forums, etc, to our new PHPBB home.
As for Chat- This one (sign in with any id and password) is I think one of the best options. We can buy it for $5 and attach it to our forums.
As for hosting, the php people reccomend LunarPages. They are cheap (only $6.95 a month) and we get 400GB/month and 5000MB storage space. It's a very reliable server, with very very little downtime.
Jeremy has offered to make a mock-up version of the PHPGuild on our server to see how good it can be made to look, he'll probably be able to do that in early august.
I'm certainly not already deciding on this, I think everyone should put forth their opinions on wether vBulletin or PHPBB is best, or if you've found another forum which seems better, please tell us about it.
I just think it's best if we deal with this now, as it may take some time to get totally right, and I don't want us to have guild downtime :3
Indigo
vBulletin - It's reliable, highly customisable, and we don't have to pay for it again after the one-off payment. That original payment buys the forum software and allows us to use it forever. We would pay $30 for updates if we chose to have them. The one-off payment is $160.
vBulletin is NOT a forum host like ezboard and yuku, it is software which we would buy and host ourselves.
PHPBB - Again, totally customisable, the current version has been rewritten to be very reliable, many mods are available, it would integrate seamlessly with the Guilder's Gallery, we could add a chat (see below), and most importantly it is FREE!
So one might immidietly go for the PHPBB, however the most important feature of vBulletin is that it is made by a professional company and therefore has good support. But like I said, Jeremy is good with PHP (he did the Guilder's Gallery) and would be able to correct any issues we had with the software.
As you may have guessed, I'm in support of the PHPBB option. If any of you are still unsure, Ezconvert may persuede you. Yes! We can actually rip the guild forum as it is, along with all accounts (although passwords wuld need to be recreated,) messeges, individual forums, etc, to our new PHPBB home.
As for Chat- This one (sign in with any id and password) is I think one of the best options. We can buy it for $5 and attach it to our forums.
As for hosting, the php people reccomend LunarPages. They are cheap (only $6.95 a month) and we get 400GB/month and 5000MB storage space. It's a very reliable server, with very very little downtime.
Jeremy has offered to make a mock-up version of the PHPGuild on our server to see how good it can be made to look, he'll probably be able to do that in early august.
I'm certainly not already deciding on this, I think everyone should put forth their opinions on wether vBulletin or PHPBB is best, or if you've found another forum which seems better, please tell us about it.
I just think it's best if we deal with this now, as it may take some time to get totally right, and I don't want us to have guild downtime :3
Indigo
"You lot. You spend all your time thinking about dying, like you're going to get killed by eggs, or beef, or global warming, or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible. That maybe you survive." ~Doctor Who
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, serverwise. 
