Proboards Forums--good or bad?

[Steve S.]

Hey everyone!

Ive been looking to make a forum board for our team and ive made one using proboards at, http://1591.proboards81.com.

I am looking for some feedback on it and for those who have used the service before, do you think it is good or bad and why....

And if you have a forum, what software/service do you use??

Thanks,
-Steve

[sanddrag]

I've never used it. It seems pretty good but I like self-hosted boards better like phpBB. What are the server specs that your team site is hosted on? Also, I've found that most forums on team sites rarely get used.

[fimmel]

for the green team 885's website i use Invision Power Board v1.3.....it works nicely...all you need is a server that can use php and a MYSQL database

[Pavan Dave]

Originally Posted by fimmel

for the green team 885's website i use Invision Power Board v1.3.....it works nicely...all you need is a server that can use php and a MYSQL database

Fianlly something i have some expertise in. Proboards are horrible compared to Invision Power and InvisionFree.

Go to invisionfree.com and their boards are 10X easier to manage, Easier to control, and are much more organized forums and you can do so much more with Invision anything.

Plus if you ever need help, a lot of people are familiar with invision.

-Pavan

[chris31]

bleh, 2 ads. I would never use that. I prefer self run boards such as phpBB, SMF and IPB. Last year I found that our team didnt use it much. We would post a few things, but not much. And then we would have to have the same discussion in a meeting since not everyone had time/internet to read the online forum posts.

[GRaduns340]

I've had bad experience with Proboards. It's not near as customizable as I would have liked, and like some people said, it's not as widely used an supported as others.

I installed SMF on the Team 340 site over the summer. I highly recommend it. I haven't had any problems with it yet - aside from the one time I accidentally changed the DB password and forgot to change it on the forum config first, but that was obviously my fault. SMF seems to have the clear advantage in publishing community as well. I have seen countless mods for SMF, and even worked with a dev team for one myself for a short time. It's pretty easy to find anything you need for it.

As for the lack of use on most team forums, ours are getting quite a bit of use. We used to have communication spread out over 2 or 3 different sources, but now that our leader has decided he likes the forum, he has made that the official source of everything. I think we've averaged almost 10 posts/day this month. One nice feature that most people don't know about, but is very nice if you do, is the newsletter function. It allows administrators (or those with permission) to send newsletters out to anyone who has registered for the forum. SMF will be coming out with the full release version 1.1 soon (mid-October), so I might just wait until then to do it if that's the route you decide to take, or you can install the current release now and upgrade later.

One other note on Proboards: They use phpbb, but since they host it for you, they limit a lot of the functions, while expanding some mods. I think if you like the feel of Proboards, you should just install phpbb on your own space. That does require PHP and MySQL on the server, though, as does SMF and nearly any other forum software.

[Bharat Nain]

Originally Posted by team1591

Hey everyone!

Ive been looking to make a forum board for our team and ive made one using proboards at, http://1591.proboards81.com.

I am looking for some feedback on it and for those who have used the service before, do you think it is good or bad and why....

And if you have a forum, what software/service do you use??

Thanks,
-Steve

If your needs are very basic I'd say go for it. I used proboards for one of my projects for a year back in 2003 and I was happy with it. If you desire more control and such, then you can try some of the other suggested boards. You shouldn't need anything else if you are using it as a simple communication tool for your team.

[DarkJedi613]

Originally Posted by GRaduns340

One other note on Proboards: They use phpbb, but since they host it for you, they limit a lot of the functions, while expanding some mods. I think if you like the feel of Proboards, you should just install phpbb on your own space. That does require PHP and MySQL on the server, though, as does SMF and nearly any other forum software.

They use a custom codebase, its not phpBB.

Personally I like ProBoards, in my opinion its the best remotely hosted free forum around. The ads aren't too intrusive and it is relatively customizable through the control panel and theres a lot of mods around for it. I'd say definitly use it if your site cannot support a self hosted forum. I extensively used ProBoards for a while though and know a decent amount about it - I used to post on their support forum a lot. If you have any specific questions feel free to PM/IM me.

We use phpBB on our server. Its fine, I haven't set up any mods or anything on it. I hate the way layouts are created though. Version 3 is coming out soon I think?