PaulStoffregen
Well-known member
Ok, I know this is crazy talk, but....
Perhaps we should consider migrating from vBulletin to XenForo before making any really substantial forum changes or integration with a wiki? Today we're running very close to the original stock vbulletin. I believe our only customizations are the Are-You-A-Human check, the recent 3-reports=moderation, changing wording and removing unused stuff by editing templates (the "forum rule"), and various configuration.
XenForo (and many others) can import from vBulletin. But the import scripts only understand the stock database tables and configuration. The farther we stray from the stock setup, the more painful migration will be.
When we bought vBulletin three years ago, some people were already claiming it had jumped the shark, not long after the original company had been acquired. The new owners launched version 5, which wasn't going so well then (the reason we went with version 4), and apparently v5 still isn't working well. At the time, vBulletin 4 still seemed the best alternative. Even now, many people still recommend it as the most mature and stable forums.
Today, vBulletin 4 seems like a dead end, and version 5 appears like it's never going to mature.
Apparently some of the original vBulletin developers left the company to start XenForo. It was not at a really usable state 3 years ago. Lawsuits were also in play, which were settled in 2013. Even if there's no source code in common, XenForo is clearly modelled from vBulletin, but with a LOT more development invested in recent years. I spent a little time using it, and wow, it's so similar but seems greatly improved and much more polished all around.
There also seems to be a pretty good community of add-on products. VaultWiki supports it, and there's a MediaWiki bridge. A simple reports to automatic moderation mod exists. It's also now on AreYouAHuman's supported list.
Perhaps we should consider migrating from vBulletin to XenForo before making any really substantial forum changes or integration with a wiki? Today we're running very close to the original stock vbulletin. I believe our only customizations are the Are-You-A-Human check, the recent 3-reports=moderation, changing wording and removing unused stuff by editing templates (the "forum rule"), and various configuration.
XenForo (and many others) can import from vBulletin. But the import scripts only understand the stock database tables and configuration. The farther we stray from the stock setup, the more painful migration will be.
When we bought vBulletin three years ago, some people were already claiming it had jumped the shark, not long after the original company had been acquired. The new owners launched version 5, which wasn't going so well then (the reason we went with version 4), and apparently v5 still isn't working well. At the time, vBulletin 4 still seemed the best alternative. Even now, many people still recommend it as the most mature and stable forums.
Today, vBulletin 4 seems like a dead end, and version 5 appears like it's never going to mature.
Apparently some of the original vBulletin developers left the company to start XenForo. It was not at a really usable state 3 years ago. Lawsuits were also in play, which were settled in 2013. Even if there's no source code in common, XenForo is clearly modelled from vBulletin, but with a LOT more development invested in recent years. I spent a little time using it, and wow, it's so similar but seems greatly improved and much more polished all around.
There also seems to be a pretty good community of add-on products. VaultWiki supports it, and there's a MediaWiki bridge. A simple reports to automatic moderation mod exists. It's also now on AreYouAHuman's supported list.