I have to ask!

**fords8** · 04-26-21, 09:34 AM

Has there been any talk of moving SG to something other than vB? Point me to the topic please if it has been talked about. If not, can we chat about it here? Or is everyone happy with the way it is?

**Philip** · 04-26-21, 10:27 AM

There hasn't been a discussion, but I've been thinking about it on and off. vB 4 is aging, and I have no plans to move to vB 5, so that leaves other PHP/MySQL alternatives.

I've considered something like phpBB, SMF and Xenoro, but I don't know which one I like.

**fords8** · 04-26-21, 10:32 AM

Well phpBB and SMF are free. Which is great. But I think out of those 3, Xenforo is the best. But you have to pay for it.

**Philip** · 04-26-21, 11:45 AM

vBulletin changed ownership and it is subscription based since vB 5, they went in the wrong direction a few years back and is way overpriced. They've lost market share, they were huge at one time up to vB 4.x
Xenforo has better pricing than vB, it is still paid, but somewhat affordable. Not sure what makes it much better than the free alternatives.
What I didn't like about phpBB is that the interface is a bit dated, it seems similar to vB.
I don't know enough about SMF.
There may be other good alternatives out there too, idk. I will look around.

**fords8** · 04-26-21, 11:53 AM

Originally Posted by Philip

vBulletin changed ownership and it is subscription based since vB 5, they went in the wrong direction a few years back and is way overpriced. They've lost market share, they were huge at one time up to vB 4.x
Xenforo has better pricing than vB, it is still paid, but somewhat affordable. Not sure what makes it much better than the free alternatives.

I own lics to all of them. I think I have 2 or 3 vBs. Only one of them is 5. The others are 4. I was big on SMF and phpBB back in the day, but I think they are behind in a lot of areas. XF I have 5 lics for. Used to use them all until I got out of the forum game for a while. Let all my domains go. One of the sites had about a mil in posts. One thing nice, it only cost me 55.00 to renew one of them and use it if I want too.

**Philip** · 04-26-21, 01:44 PM

I only have a couple of vB 4 licenses, will eventually abandon vB in favor of something a bit more modern. Still on the fence as to which way to go, Xenforo looks a bit better than phpBB, but all three are similar enough it seems.
I am also running a couple of different servers, the one SpeedGuide is on currently still runs PHP 5.6, I have to migrate it to the other server with PHP 7.4 before changing the forums.

**fords8** · 04-26-21, 02:08 PM

Originally Posted by Philip

I only have a couple of vB 4 licenses, will eventually abandon vB in favor of something a bit more modern. Still on the fence as to which way to go, Xenforo looks a bit better than phpBB, but all three are similar enough it seems.
I am also running a couple of different servers, the one SpeedGuide is on currently still runs PHP 5.6, I have to migrate it to the other server with PHP 7.4 before changing the forums.

OK how about IPB? hehe Yes you will have to update the PHP. I am into XF I think the most.

**Philip** · 04-27-21, 08:57 AM

I had never seen IPB before. Seems interesting, the self-hosted version still requires PHP 7.1 I think. I will check it out when I have some time.

**fords8** · 04-27-21, 09:09 AM

Yeah! no matter what you use these days, you will need PHP updated. It is a good idea to update it anyways. I think they fixed a bunch of things with it. I have not been keeping up with it. Starting to look at it more. Getting the itch to start playing around with forums again.

**Philip** · 04-27-21, 10:03 AM

Yeah, I know, you're right. I usually try to keep up with PHP updates, I've slacked with this one a bit. The problem is with older Linux OSes.. I don't want to mess with a running live server and compile PHP plus many other packages from source, don't want the downtime. It's easier to just move it into an updated OS, or use the built-in update managers (dnf, yum, apt, etc.)

**fords8** · 04-27-21, 11:39 AM

What are ya running for a OS? Do you have the pick of many servers?

**Philip** · 04-27-21, 11:56 AM

We have two servers running at the data center currently, both are running Fedora Core, just because I am used to it I guess. The one that SG is currently on is old, I have another running the latest Fedora Core 33, however I have to fix a few functions/mysql queries to make the main site compatible with PHP 7 before migrating too.