Forum Software and please don't do what TT is doing...

Nevermind, TT has changed from VB (been a while since I've been there). They are now using the lovely IP.Boards...see my comment above about them

3.05...that's always been IP.Boards support response "oh, you need to upgrade"...we are on the most current version...the real answer is they need to put a product out that's worth running.

Yeah, Huddler is a skinned IP.Board

I'm thinking TT's new format really sucks. First three words out of my mouth when I logged in were WTF?

I agree completely, forums are a horrible way to archive/display information. If you decide to run IP.Boards, get ready to pay to have a smooth running board. The site I've been helping with is running two machines, a DB with a quad core proc and 12GB of memory and a web server with a quad core proc and 8GB of memory. If they were running VB, they wouldn't even be breaking a sweat, with IP.Boards they are hammered. They average around 400 users on at once. My best suggestions would be to get ready to have a customized forum software (IP. Boards) or stick with VB. Stick with 3.8 for now until 4.0 gets it's act together. I'm not sure what your bias is against vb but it is the best forum software out there hands down. Also, I know you've mentioned you don't like to mess with the underlying code of the forum or have additional plugins...well IP.Boards doesn't even have simple ad integration yet (the most basic need of a forum package that is going to provide income). You want to run vendor banners, get ready to have custom code.

Yea the new TT isn't to hot. However I suspect it will get better. As with the last upgrade there was some growing pains for a while. With a change this big there are bound to be problems. I'm giving it till mid May to pass judgement.

Okay, I don't know much about the various different forum software out there, but how about Simple Machines Forum? I moderate at a Yamaha IT site that uses it and it's not so bad as a user IMO.

Yeah, it definitely comes down to implementation, but you may as well start with the best you can. Why are you comparing to gaiaonline? They use phpbb...and I'm willing to bet they have fulltime developers and admins supporting their site.

Go to www.big-boards.com and tell me how many of the top 25 are running IP.Boards? While you may say that you aren't that large, it does show you what the boards that really know what they are doing in the forum world are running.

I really don't care what you run for forum software, apparently you take first hand feedback as offensive or something. You seem to be getting a bit defensive. I'm only offering advice after having run several large forums. From the time I have been around here I have gotten the distinct impression that both you and your other admin (Moose Head) are both fairly new to the admin side of the forum world, I figured you'd appreciate the firsthand feedback. Ignore it if you don't want it.

I'm not an admin on the one site I've been referring to. Due to my fulltime job as a System Engineer for one of the largest online retailers in the world, I have a very extensive knowledge of systems and especially web facing systems. So I've been tweaking their backend servers for them. I am an admin for several other sites all with 15K+ members and all of them averaging 200+ members at just about any given time.

Good luck with your upgrade, I hope it goes smooth and you continue to have a tight running site. If you want help, speak up, I'm happy to help you out any way I can.

I've used most CMS systems out there but have never used IP.Content. I'd be happy to help you with it (it's just HTML/PHP/CSS) so it can't be that big of a deal nor that different to learn from some of the other CMS systems.

lol ... Everyone wants change and then when you get ... u don't like it ... lol ...

You'll get used to it over there and you will learn to love it ... lol ...

Same a V6s, 4 cylinders, 4ts, computers in general, gray hair, nose & ear hair, cellphones, blurry vision, $3GAL gas , etc ... and all the other changes in your life

Straight up reliability I would put 3.8 a bit above all the others right now, but like you mentioned you gotta move forward. v4 in testing was looking good, but after more testing of later releases and more of a load it's proven to be not nearly as reliable. I've been getting a lot more MySQL errors with it and a small load vs. 3.8 with a large load (no errors ever). I've not had much of a performance issue with v4. ipb3.0.5 is miles ahead of 3.0.0 and if your database is tuned correctly, you won't have too many issues with reliability. ipb does take more resources to run a website of the same size on vb. However, reliability and performance go hand in hand. What good is a website that never goes down if you only have a couple people on but if you get too many you start to have crashes (for whatever reason). Also, a "crash" isn't necessarily a 404 or a 503. If the site takes too long to load and the user goes elsewhere, well, that's worse than a 404 or 503.

My last bit of advice, which I think you're already good on, is make sure that your server software isn't windows. Yes, this sounds odd but the site I've been helping with was on Win2K8 Getting them on to a Linux solution made a huge difference (I used to be a Window Admin for the same company I currently work for so it wasn't lack of knowledge either ).

That's the absolute truth!