PHPbb team : you have to catch up with the compition

[MarkS]

I have a motto that I live by:

"The cheaper the merchandise, the higher the gloss."

Ever gone out to buy furnature? Or frying pans? The ones that are very expensive sometimes have a dull look to them, and they aren't shiny. Or with a dining room table, the expensive ones are real wood that have beauty in the naturalism of it, not the polish.

But the cheap ones, they are covered in gloss, in polish, in wax. This is solely to make them look good so that you'll buy them. But in a few months, the chrome is ripped off of the pans, and the table is falling apart. It's cheap merchandise made to look excellent, only to break down and not be useful, causing more time and money in the longrun.

The same goes with software and BBs. vB and IPB are full of bells and whistles that are in effect, unneeded and unnecessary. They look good with all of their features, and the more they have, the more you want it. But you must realize that if something is not put together correctly and only looks good, it will have problems later, and you'll end of saying "Why the heck did I just throw away a hundred bucks for all of these features that only get in the way and I don't need?"

Even though IPB and vB are stable, IMO, they are not put together with as much care and respect as phpBB is. They are full of unnecessary code and aren't efficiant to serve their purpose.

phpBB will always remain a solid piece of software, because the developers take their time, and care about the finished product. They don't want to shove it out there as fast as possible so they can make a pretty penny.

[Draegonis]

Amen.

[Skeleton]

If you cannot wait, make your own. People have social lives (Well, i am an exclusion)

[R45]

For the perfs, try phpBB 2.0 with a half and hundred forums, plus 800 connected users on instant : that's what I call a critical situation (and it is not an hypotethical situation). It doesn't means phpBB 2.0 is not reliable (actually it is very reliable), but simply it requires more power than vBulletin 2.x, that's all. phpBB 2.1 seems to solve drasticely this.

Now now, I disagree with that at a point. phpBB 2.0 does have its problems, but with some really minor modifications to the code, it can be as fast and stable as any other solution, I dare to say better. I safely maintain a phpBB2.0 on two midrange server (single Xeon for the webserver, dual for the database) on PostgreSQL and with 800 users online, the site slows down considerable, but it is 100% operational. This is without any serverside optimising or a massive pipe between the two servers, a crappy stock kernel and a lot of other things that could be done.

I hate to see people bash phpBB 2.0 too much. It generally is well written, just requires a couple of changes about the place to really shine.

[wacky_hacky]

I hate to see people bash phpBB 2.0 too much. It generally is well written, just requires a couple of changes about the place to really shine

People forget that phpBB 2.0.x still has PHP3 in mind as well as backwards compatibility. People forget this quite often, but it is one of the (now) "pitfalls" regarding optimized code.

I am very happy to see that phpBB 2.2 will be using the more advanced functions, e.g. array handling. At least you see progress in the code, as opposed to the paywares, where code structure doesn't seem to progress/improve as major builds are released.

[alitokmen]

Just a note: is there a way we can have a faster foruming system with phpBB XX (maybe Lite)?

I actually see a very complex and superbly done still slow rendering & etc engine... Hum?

[psoTFX]

phpBB is templated, that is not changing. If you want to build the HTML into the forum, best of luck It's not something we wish to spend time doing.

[R45]

Just a note: is there a way we can have a faster foruming system with phpBB XX (maybe Lite)?

I actually see a very complex and superbly done still slow rendering & etc engine... Hum?

CyberAlien's Template caching MOD is a very useful for 2.0 . I believe it's called Extreme Styles or something like that.

[DoD]

Is this getting at the time it takes to process the template system?

The index page is generated in a faster time than it takes for me to download the HTML for the index page on a 512kbps cable connection.

phpBB is very fast IMO, and doesnt need to be any faster, simply as you wont notice it at all.

[Ptirhiik_]

> R45 : you may re-read what I wrote, before calling this "bashing" : do you figure I write mods for phpBB because I don't like the product ?

But knowing its limits is also a reasonable way to choose the appropriate product for the appropriate need (both things that are often neglicated).

> DoD : the templating system, even using cached skeletons, for the same final page will remains slower than a pure HTML page (so with no process). I think I have seen a modification to the setup (combinaison of server settings and phpBB mod) in the phpbbhacks.com tutos to cache the result of the page generation at the serer level, although I just overviewed it. Using php process on all pages can be an issue on some servers (lack of memory, access limited to the database and so), although it reflects a wrong choice for the hosting rather than a lack of the product. I agree that using or not a cached system, whatever level it acts on, is often a gain ranged .01 sec rather than 1 sec.