Why Is It So Difficult to Compare UBBTheads to other systems like vBulletin? What is better and why are a few large sites defecting?
I'm a long time UBB user. We moved from an old perl system, to what became 'Classic', to Threads. I'm currently running a 6.x series threads with 900,000 msgs, and have a test system up and running on 7.4.1. I'm a 'gold' member, though the fact that we already have paid for the upgrades isn't reason enough to stay with ubb or to change.
The fact is vbulletin has 20-40x? as many installs (probably for a variety of historic reasons), and currently seems quite similar to ubbthreads, so I thought it should be considered as a possible upgrade option. In some ways I like the look and feel of UBB better (and the lifetime upgrade option), though vbulletin does have a few nice features, in particular, wysiwyg msg editing (w/ ctrl-b ctrl-i ctrl-u etc. functions) as well as easy to find third-party plug-ins like 'iTrader' ratings.
There have been some a few defections this year. TrekBBS switch from ubb to vbul in March, and boards.lineage2.com changed from ubb to vbul less than two weeks ago. [Rick, it is time to remove Lineage2 from being one of the rotating 'Featured Forum' spots on the ubbthreads.com home page.] Did they find an advantage in vbulletin? Or where they already running other sites with vbulletin and simply wanted to standardize with a single package?
I asked TrekBBS why they changed and didn't get an answer. I have the same question pending with NCSoft/Lineage2. Both packages have their supporters that says their system is 'better' without any substantiation. I'm actually curious how server load compares, etc...
So this post is really bait for a number of questions:
1) Does anybody have any idea why a couple large systems have changed?
2) Is there really...really... any significant difference between either system?
and one thought:
3) the competition has the advantage of pure numbers...soldiers on the ground so to speak. Maybe ubb needs: (a) a page posting advantages over other systems, ie: lifetime upgrade option, strong feature set (b) an easy to use directory of third party add-ons for ubb, with a rating system (ubbdev forum with random threads isn't it), (c) modern importers for changing from the competition like vbulletin to ubbthreads -- the mere publicity of an importer would suggest some people find a reason for importing TO ubb. The competition has (imperfect) importers out of ubb. which serve as a forum of publicity.
I'm slightly leaning towards staying with ubb, though it isn't/wasn't an automatic decision. I like some of the competition's features, I wonder why some other forums have switched, and I worry that if more and more new system by the competitor's offerings that eventually it may result in more resources being available for R&D down the road...
I'd like to hear what others think, to both help me with my decision and in figuring how how to help ubb 'grow'.
Greg
