At what point do you purchase a forum script?

[orion_joel]

Hi All

I have been looking to start building some community website's. The problem i am fighting with is wheather or not to buy a script such as vbulletin for the forum or not. I mean in the long run i would definatly want to buy one such a vbulletin but at what point, it seems pointless to buy it upfront wiuthout knowing the popularity of the forum but then when do you decide to make the upgrade.

Thanks for the help if anyone can make a suggestion.

[wfwh]

vbulletin is a VERY powerful program. They offer so many more add-ons, admin, mod, back-end features then any other forum out there. Your best thing to do is just start small, phpBB, Invision Board, etc... Once you generate some income to purchase vbulletin then go for it. If you visit one of the add-on sites (vbulletin.org) they offer scripts/add-ons that will help you move all your info from your old board into vbulletin.

If you ever need help with vbulletin, contact me...We have been running a site with it for 2 years now, and love it!

[241Solutions]

If your site is in ColdFusion I have one of the best forums ever. It is a copy of PHPBB made in Coldfusion. Has every addon you could want. Avatars, PM's, Huge admin portal. You can see an example of it at www.tronetcomputing.com click on the link for the forum.

[orion_joel]

Hi

Thanks for the link 241Solutions, the CFBB does look great but unfortunatly my hosting doesnt have Cold Fusion that i am aware of, I will have to check out though and see if they do. Do you have a demo of the Admin site that i can look at anywhere?

thanks

[chaplin]

Joel, you can try YABB which is free and rather good. It has php and cgi versions.

[Jade456]

Personally I like phpBBB. Great program, good for first time users as well.

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[wfwh]

To correct my partners statement above... VB when purchased has scripts available at vb.com that allow you to move all data from the board you are using into vb. Well designed and very profession. It also tends to draw more people to it as well. Our other site exploded after we installed vb.

[orion_joel]

Hi All

Well i think i have decided that i am going to go with phpBB. I did have a look at YaBB but tries installing it and couldnt get it going. I have used phpbb before and it works, and seems to be easier to install. But it could just be me.

I also found phpbbhacks.com which has a huge number of hacks for phpbb and even some pre-hacked version which may be suitable for me.

Thanks for the responses to everyone, i may think about moving to vb later on as i think it is probably the best community forum around but just carnt afford the expense at the moment.

[241Solutions]

phpbb is a good one. The only problem is that it is written in php instead of coldfusion which makes the forums I showed you much better

Actually the best message board/forum solution is fusetalk (http://www.fusetalk.com/) The topped out version has built in chat that is the best around.

But again, its in coldfusion. Change your host.

[orion_joel]

I would change hosting but there is to much work involved in moving 50 odd sites, and redirecting domains reconfiguring email settings and all the work involved in that, so for the time being i think i going to have to stay where i am unfortunatly.