UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums General Suggestions and Feedback Look Here !! some things no found in this product

http://www.forummatrix.org/compare/Invision-Power-Board%2BUBB.threads%2BvBulletin

some things no found in this product :
1 \ WYSIWYG Editor
2 \ Redirect Forums
3 \ Trashcan Forum
4 \ Plugins support
5 \ CAPTCHA
6 \ Warnings
7 \ Suspension
8 \ Archiving
9 \ Export private messages

I had originally added UBB.threads to that site, but don't think I'll worry about updating it. The main reason is the features you get to check off are limited. There are a variety of things we have that some don't but there's not even an option for them, so the comparison is highly subjective.

I can say that I like how redirect forums look hehe...

As for a trashcan forum, what's to stop you from creating a boneyard forum and just moving things there?

As for plugins, there has been a huge development community at UBBDev/ThreadsDev/UBB Code Hackers that has been around since vB has been in diapers...

WYSIWYG we have a quite nice and powerful editor that I've yet to hear any complaints on.

Captcha will be in 7.1, onlya visual captcha; it should be noted however that only having a visual captcha isn't compliant with accessability laws in most countries; you have to cater to numerous types of disabilities for it to be legal. The feature itself in UBB.Threads will be admin changable so will be enabled on a site by site basis which would put the owners in charge of any alternative registrations.

Warnings and Suspensions, I've never found it hard, as an admin of several communities, to personally warn my users about their conduct, in fact, my moderators and senior members don't have problems either... As for a suspension, you can remove access to your forum for a user at any time, so it would be a suspension in most reguards, no?

Archives, we've had archives for years, in UBB.C and UBB.T; simply make a forum with no posting access and read access, instant archive.

In reguards to exporting PM's, you could do this via a MySQL Dump either through command line or phpMyAdmin by dump by backing up the proper private topic tables.

redirect forums are good. They enable links that are relevant to a particular forum. Otherwise you have to put them into the forum description with html.

And another note on plugins.... I've found that dropping in a custom mod/extension to be quite easy in UBB7, so sky is the limit in that regard...

I do know that certain CMS and BBS packages do have standards for installing plugins... like a config file that auto add's db tables and configures required templates and scripts. I suppose that would be kind of a nice feature for mods/add ons, but I think it is a bit overkill.

Nice list - I like the plug-in idea, but really don't care about the rest.

My forums are too "long" already without a vanity re-direct forum - if the target of the redirect is that important, it really should be linked to in the navigation

lol true, they're only really good for small sites.

disagree - I would use them as a second or thirs sub-forum. But then every community is different

No - what about if you run a host a forum for a local study group - that is only relevant to those group members. You could include a link or two to their own community links. Those links would probably not be relevant to all your other members.

These community sub-forums are quite common - I can think of a few examples where the members of that small (or not so small) group of people would prefer to be part of a larger group, than have their own forum, which is only visited by outsiders once every blue moon. It is features like this (and the ability for mods to suspend people from individual forums), that really benefit these small groups.

But it's just a link with a counter to some other place, how is that beneficial to small groups? They aren't actual links to other forums usually, tho I guess they could link anywhere, but I'd think a link in the navigation or something would be just as beneficial to driving traffic somewhere since it's more front and center to the eye

It is very beneficial to small groups.

a link in the navigation must usually apply to all sections of the forums - if that link is not relevant to the other sections, why have it there.

On our site for example, we could easily have a dozen links per club that we support - none of these links would be valid to other clubs or remotely of interest. Therefore by having them under their sub-forum, the other clubs can just ignore them and they do not not clutter up the overall design.

If there was a way to have these 360 links on the navigation then we would.

To us (and many other sites) links as forums would streamline the entire site.

Our links might go to the league table for that club, their results, their fixtures, their website etc... These links would not be relevant to other clubs - as they would have their own links.

Ok - the majority of these links would be 100% hosted on our site, and some may be duplicated - but it would still be easy for people to find these other sections (or external pages) that are tailored to the forum that they are viewing.

A photography forum may have forums for canon users, nikon users etc. Beneath the canon forum, there may be links to canon articles, usergroups etc.

The only easy alternative to this is to have unique headers and footers for each forum (is this in 7 yet?) - and then these links could be placed in the header.

Just my own thoughts

For now you could edit each forum's "Forum Introduction Body" (for example, here) to include forum-specific links and such, although this will only be visible on the forum's postlist.