Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Reen — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:56:25 -0000

I use http://www.websitetoolbox.com for my message board hosting.

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Ahmed Muzammil — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:45:15 -0000

@Paisano Thank You

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Maxmore — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 21:37:37 -0000

One more:
http://www.forums-free.com/

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Leslie — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:58:59 -0000

click on this link : http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Layla — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:57:43 -0000

click on this link : http://www.youtube.com/watc...

if the link doesn't show up then go to youtube.com and in the search bar type in iShop

ITS AMAZING!

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Nebraska — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:29:32 -0000

I think Ning(social network) with its forums is better than all of these.

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Todd Jordan — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 23:18:50 -0000

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.

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Megan — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:01:34 -0000

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 I think many of the forum interfaces out there just look and feel outdated.

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Paisano® — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:22:13 -0000

@Ahmed
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/searc...

Here's one for wordpress blog plugin
http://wpthemesplugin.com/i...

if you want a plugin to fight spam then get this one
http://www.eadz.co.nz/blog/...

the list is endless...

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Ahmed Muzammil — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:41:30 -0000

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.

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Scott Germaise — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:00:22 -0000

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.Ohâ€¦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? Itâ€™s been under our noses all along. We just forgot where to lookâ€

Scott
Director, Product Management
Twing.com - Forums Search & Community Discovery

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

gio — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:39:47 -0000

bbPress (www.bbpress.org) is very extensible. If your familiar with the wordpress framework and theme development its a breeze!

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Alvin — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 08:42:05 -0000

Nice post, thanks for you sharing.

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Rai — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:25:30 -0000

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!

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

EJRaven — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:58:29 -0000

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.

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Paisano® — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:34:14 -0000

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

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

RelevantMind — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:09:30 -0000

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

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

toivo — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:36:35 -0000

SMF is not dead yet

http://www.simplemachines.org/

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

techmatters — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:50:03 -0000

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.

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

Mike Michalowicz — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:08:14 -0000

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

Re: 8 Resources for Message Boards 2.0

digitalfemme — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:04:41 -0000

I'm liking Tangler's look a lot. Thanks for this article! For me, it was extremely informative. I love Mashable!