Why did Epic Games choose for VBulletin as forum software, why didn’t they go for MyBB which is a free open source alternative with a lot of free plugins?
Just curious and wondering if this might be changed in the future.
Only god Sweeney knows
Hey there, it was decided on long long ago and I honestly don’t think I could track down where that decision was made. Overall vBulletin has served its purpose pretty well, but I am always willing to hear out other opinions on forums. It would be a big move to switch forums, but if the reasoning is good, then I can look into making a change.
Absolutely not, it costs loads of money, has annoying javascript popups and just a whole lot of bloat on it.
MyBB as I said is free and it has a lot of good plugins for it as well.
I think it might also work a bit faster but I don’t know for sure, I also think MyBB has a migrate option from certain other forum software like VBulletin, so migrating it would not be too hard to do.
“Absolutely not” Xenforo is one of the most secure forum softwares released to date (that’s written in PHP). Check their announcements section on their forum to see what vulnerabilities have been patched.
Loads of money? So $140 is loads of money?
“annoying javascript popups” What Xenforo forums have you been visiting? Default install doesn’t have that.
“just a whole lot of bloat on it” What I said above.
“MyBB as I said is free and it has a lot of good plugins for it as well.” Xenforo has plugins that are ‘good’.
“I think it might also work a bit faster but I don’t know for sure” I doubt it.
Xenforo hasn’t had many vulnerabilities like MyBB has.
Free isn’t always the best choice.
I’m not saying MyBB is a bad software (I do like the software myself), but for a company it is.
I don’t mean alert messages of Javascript, I mean way to many with Javascript.
The “many with Javascript” make it very user friendly.
If you’re looking for a free software then MyBB or Discourse should suffice, but if you’re going to pay for a forum software then go with Xenforo ($140) or vBulletin ($249).
NOTE: I have no hands on experience with Discourse so I can’t honestly rate/recommend it, however it does look very good.
Discourse looks really bad in my opinion, of course you might be able to change the layout but I would rather have they stayed with software that used the traditional layout.
Looks != functionality/security/etc.
True, but for the end user looks are also important, so we have to take that in account.
Very true, but security overall is the most important. Adding plugins from a 3rd party make a software become unstable and vulnerable.
The style of a site isn’t difficult to change most of the time and for these softwares that I’ve listed it’s not difficult at all. (just takes time)
So, lots of names, very few actual specific opinions.
For example, how about “I would love to be able to do X, which forum software Y supports, but the current forum doesn’t.”
Or something like “loading a thread with 50 comments uses X amount of client memory on vBulletin, but uses Y amount of client memory on software Z, so clearly that is more optimized!”
If there is no real reason to switch, that can easily be articulated and measured, then talking about other software is just an empty statement of opinions.
I’ve run Discourse. It’s OK.
I’ve run Phorum, and it wasn’t that great, but we also ended up forking and changing the code until it’s no longer like Phorum at all…
I’ve run vBulletin, and it’s fine.
I haven’t run MyBB or Xeoforo, so no suggestions from me there.
“So, lots of names, very few actual specific opinions.” I’m 100% fine with vBulletin. I was just pointing out the better options vs MyBB.
Just thought I would chime back in here to let know that I’m currently reviewing an upgrade to vbulletin v5.
Mostly this will just add new content:
Ajax for content loading
More filter/search options
Sub-forum subscriptions (watch a whole subforum instead of just a single thread)
Built-in notifications
Inline Comments
Replacing Votes with Likes (can still sort by likes)
Overall, nothing should be taken out and I’m working to make sure the style doesn’t change to be any bulkier than what it is currently.
Let me know what you think!
Yes, Avatars are also in the features, but I want to make sure it’s something you can toggle seeing. Quite a few people are divided on this one, so I want to make sure is happy.
Awesome! I’ll make sure its turned on 
Okay, they assure me that the avatar’s visibility is toggle-able!
Is this perhaps why we are witnessing a slowdown on the forums? Posting in a thread doesn’t seem to be registering it as a new post, or raising the thread to the first page. I don’t know if it’s just me, or what.