I'm liking Tangler's look a lot. Thanks for this article! For me, it was extremely informative. I love Mashable!
Toilet Paper Entrepreneur
· 1 year ago
Nice post. Opened my eyes to how "old school" I am! Never heard of Vanilla before... and I am off to check it out.
- Mike Michalowicz
techmatters
· 1 year ago
Surprised not to see http://www.invisionplus.net as it tops my list as it is a hosting service and you don't need to install a software like you do for phpBB.
I love seeing the innovation in this space. Personally, I am a big fan of Grouply, Lefora and Tangler.
I think one of the big challenges in the space is that communities based on older message board platforms are entrenched with a big established user base. They also have a huge archive of post content very valuable to their community (not mention search indexed). This makes switching costs pretty high and is probably a big reason there hasn't been more innovation in the space.
Aaron
paisano
· 1 year ago
Great feedback! I really liked the invisionplus and SMF sites. I will add them to the master list of message boards that I will share online in a public document. I expect many more new players to appear on the scene and big changes in this space.
Pai
EJRaven
· 1 year ago
What an excuse post to advertise Tangler. In my 8+ years of posting and creating community forums, have I come across to something like Tangler... and I'm not impressed.
The user interface is poor, I like to know the top threads but that's not what I visit forums for, Tangler also defeats one of the strong points of posting in a forum, and that is to interact and get to know the users of the community, this means remembering their avatars and signatures etc. Tangler is good only if have an informational-strict site, but I don't see myself using anything else other than Invision Power Board or vBulletin for my community forums, much less something like Tangler.
Rai
· 1 year ago
Hi EJRaven. I'm the Tangler Community Manager.
Your comments were interesting. Firstly, I'd like to point out that there is a high level of interaction between members in the forums. Apart from the real-timeliness, forum members also use the private conversation functionality for one-on-one interaction. User avatars are included with messages, and a limited profile is also displayed in a hover with every post.
I'd love to find out more about the points you made about the UI and using Tangler for informational-strict sites. Would be great if you could drop me a mail - rai@tangler.com. Cheers!
Alvin
· 1 year ago
Nice post, thanks for you sharing.
gio
· 1 year ago
bbPress (www.bbpress.org) is very extensible. If your familiar with the wordpress framework and theme development its a breeze!
Scott Germaise
· 1 year ago
Here's the thing. I'm a big fan of a lot of the latest and greatest social tools. But there's reasons why simple, basic threaded discussion platforms not only survive, but grow. There's something - almost intangible - about the user experience in these communities. A lot of the bright shiny new stuff includes solutions looking for problems which might not even exist. Craig Stoltz at Web 2.Oh…really? had a great quote about this with regard to forums... "That whole creating communities-of-shared-interests thing? That whole power-of-collective wisdom thing? That whole long tail thing? You know, that whole web 2.0 thing? It’s been under our noses all along. We just forgot where to lookâ€
Scott Director, Product Management Twing.com - Forums Search & Community Discovery
Ahmed Muzammil
· 1 year ago
Please let me know, which are the addons that are available to add blog support and wiki support to phpbb.
Please give links to those addons or give the addon names.
Paisano
· 1 year ago
@Ahmed Sure thing. There are tons of cool plugins and addons for PhpBB but here are some.
Earlier this year my partner and I moved our forum from vBulletin to Drupal. Althrough Drupal lacks some of the features of vB, we felt that the interface was much more modern, it ties in well with our content site, and there is a huge, huge potential for new and unique features.
The article linked above has more info about the reasons to switch. Vanilla was at the top of our list as well, before we decided on Drupal. I think many of the forum interfaces out there just look and feel outdated.
Todd Jordan
· 1 year ago
Pai,
Solid rundown. I'd have loved more information on a couple of these though as I'm shopping around for a BB system.
Most promising on my list are vB and phpBB so far. That's based on install base and support. vB is leading though based on reports that phpBB still has significant security holes. Your note about 'old style' also makes me take a step back.
I've not investigated Drupal, and I noticed you didn't mention it in the list. I believe though that Drupal != bulletin board system but is a more comprehensive tool, including blogging and other tools as well. Probably best to make another article just for that.
On a personal note, I do appreciate your reviews and look forward to more useful ones like this.
Nebraska
· 1 year ago
I think Ning(social network) with its forums is better than all of these.
All Comments
- Mike Michalowicz
http://www.simplemachines.org/
I think one of the big challenges in the space is that communities based on older message board platforms are entrenched with a big established user base. They also have a huge archive of post content very valuable to their community (not mention search indexed). This makes switching costs pretty high and is probably a big reason there hasn't been more innovation in the space.
Aaron
Pai
The user interface is poor, I like to know the top threads but that's not what I visit forums for, Tangler also defeats one of the strong points of posting in a forum, and that is to interact and get to know the users of the community, this means remembering their avatars and signatures etc. Tangler is good only if have an informational-strict site, but I don't see myself using anything else other than Invision Power Board or vBulletin for my community forums, much less something like Tangler.
Your comments were interesting.
Firstly, I'd like to point out that there is a high level of interaction between members in the forums. Apart from the real-timeliness, forum members also use the private conversation functionality for one-on-one interaction. User avatars are included with messages, and a limited profile is also displayed in a hover with every post.
I'd love to find out more about the points you made about the UI and using Tangler for informational-strict sites. Would be great if you could drop me a mail - rai@tangler.com.
Cheers!
Scott
Director, Product Management
Twing.com - Forums Search & Community Discovery
Please give links to those addons or give the addon names.
Sure thing. There are tons of cool plugins and addons for PhpBB but here are some.
This will show a bunch for wiki plugins such as MediaWiki and DokuWiki...among others.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=phpbb+...
Here's one for wordpress blog plugin
http://wpthemesplugin.com/intergrate-phpbb-and-...
if you want a plugin to fight spam then get this one
http://www.eadz.co.nz/blog/article/phpbb-akisme...
the list is endless...
The article linked above has more info about the reasons to switch. Vanilla was at the top of our list as well, before we decided on Drupal. I think many of the forum interfaces out there just look and feel outdated.
Solid rundown. I'd have loved more information on a couple of these though as I'm shopping around for a BB system.
Most promising on my list are vB and phpBB so far. That's based on install base and support. vB is leading though based on reports that phpBB still has significant security holes. Your note about 'old style' also makes me take a step back.
I've not investigated Drupal, and I noticed you didn't mention it in the list. I believe though that Drupal != bulletin board system but is a more comprehensive tool, including blogging and other tools as well. Probably best to make another article just for that.
On a personal note, I do appreciate your reviews and look forward to more useful ones like this.
if the link doesn't show up then go to youtube.com and in the search bar type in iShop
ITS AMAZING!
http://www.forums-free.com/