Forum design

shamandgg · Post by **shamandgg** » 2005-09-20 07:45

Why did you play with forums design (icons, colors, fonts.. well overall)?
It looked much better before!
Simplistic, clean, sharp and very proffesional.
Now it's kinda crappy. Sorry

CobraPhantom · Post by **CobraPhantom** » 2005-09-20 07:47

The reason why is they had to switch to a different type of forums cuz the old one was exploited. This type of forum is more secure. I think these forums are better, I dont see anything wrong with them now. Trust me, there is definately worse ones out there...

Artnez · Post by **Artnez** » 2005-09-20 07:48

From what I know, the old forum they had (phpBB) is a piece of shit. Mainly because their development team allowed script injenction from url variables -- which is enough to say that they are either complete amateurs or completely disorganized.

So, PR moved over to vBulletin, which is a commercial forum that you actually pay for -- thus it is much more secure and much more user friendly -- with more tools.

This happened last week, so i'm guessing they are still working on the skin.

EDIT: What are you doing up cobra? huh? HUH?

Post by **BlakeJr** » 2005-09-20 16:17

As with everything else in this world, things change. In this case it takes a while to get used to but I think it's fine now.

Post by **Drew** » 2005-09-20 16:28

shamandgg wrote:Why did you play with forums design (icons, colors, fonts.. well overall)?
It looked much better before!
Simplistic, clean, sharp and very proffesional.
Now it's kinda crappy. Sorry

The colors all come from my original css file so I dont know what you are saying about that.

As for the Icons:
VB has tons of other icons that phpBB did not so we had to manage that.

VB is much more secure with out the constant updates and we now have a support contact for issues and spefic bugs to our needs. Managing phpBB is a job in itself if you want it to be. VB, once you get it setup, manages itself.

Ohh and no need to be sorry

Beckwith · Post by **Beckwith** » 2005-09-20 21:23

dont ever call PHPBB a piece of shit its classic and its extremely flexible and can be easily modified to do just about anything its ONLY flaw in my mind is that it lacks the security upgrades others have developed

im still not blown away by Vbulletin but im very impressed and give drew and exceptional amount of credit for making something good out of what i feel is a sub par product

Post by **requiem** » 2005-09-20 21:34

shamandogg,

As the others have said, we've had to change the entire system. This we did overnight, so please take this into consideration when making such comments. Cheers.

Post by **BrokenArrow** » 2005-09-20 21:47

i think these forums are great regardless of how much time you had to set them up, they work pretty much the same as or better than the old ones, which as beck said were pretty good.

Artnez · Post by **Artnez** » 2005-09-20 22:14

Beckwith wrote:dont ever call PHPBB a piece of shit its classic and its extremely flexible and can be easily modified to do just about anything its ONLY flaw in my mind is that it lacks the security upgrades others have developed

im still not blown away by Vbulletin but im very impressed and give drew and exceptional amount of credit for making something good out of what i feel is a sub par product

And what level of web development are you on?

PHPBB is, in fact, a piece of ****. The only reason that it recieves such acclaim is that creating a forum system is a big project (by time, not by difficulty) and very few are willing to put their time into doing something like that for free.

Again, you need to judge by results. If a web application doesn't parse any user inputted data at any time, there is a severe flaw in the development cycle and the structure of the application.

I won't go more indepth than that because that would require alot of typing

Beckwith · Post by **Beckwith** » 2005-09-20 22:25

iv been on PHPBB forums for years and never had anywhere near the amount of compliants iv had towards other forum type (VB, Simple machines) iv always loved phpbb for its simplicity and consistancy

Post by **Drew** » 2005-09-20 23:02

ok VB and phpBB fan boys

Each has their postives and negatives.

Artnez · Post by **Artnez** » 2005-09-21 00:17

Beckwith wrote:iv been on PHPBB forums for years and never had anywhere near the amount of compliants iv had towards other forum type (VB, Simple machines) iv always loved phpbb for its simplicity and consistancy

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying vBulletin is all that great either.

The problem is that these things are created for as many people as possible to use -- and requests are always coming in.

Just as an example, let's say you start developing your own forum. You have a clear and concise structure for your application. You code your template engine, you then code your data objects... then... suddenly... you realize "oh shit! css in most browsers doesnt support relative paths!". At that point, you have to change the entire structure of your application... or you can "hack" your own application so that it will work.

Both phpBB and vBulletin contain a ton of these "hacks" because new things always creep up that people want and changes need to be made so that everything will be viewable in as many browsers as possible.

I don't want to come off as a jackass, but it really rubs me the wrong way when people give credit to the things that are popular, but no to those that are better -- but not as popular -- such as XOOPS.

Beckwith · Post by **Beckwith** » 2005-09-21 00:54

if someones never heard of or used XOOPS how could they give it credit?

Artnez · Post by **Artnez** » 2005-09-21 01:03

You have a point.

On the other hand, search google for:

"php content management system"

or

"php forum"

XOOPS will come up on the first or second page I believe.

shamandgg · Post by **shamandgg** » 2005-09-21 09:57

Oh I understand. I didn't want to be rude. If it sounded so, I'm sorry guys.
So you guys got hacked?
I hope you'll put the forum back together.

I'm not a big fan of vBulletin. Yes, I know it is commercial and probably is more secure. However I'm more happy with phpBB interface. I'm finding it better.

Post by **Drew** » 2005-09-21 13:04

^ Well thanks

But we have to do what is best on our end in the long run.