I have tried demos of ipb and xen and i prefered using ipb from a admin side, xen i have used a fair bit on the user end and quite like that, but as gaming is a niche that already has hundreds of forums why not, use mybb to start of with and then upgrade to a paid software if it takes off.
I think the best forum software is IPB, because it has lots of features in the admin panel.
(2013-03-17, 04:31 AM)Lo. Wrote: [ -> ]Woltlab, hands down. The community is very European, but the system is unmatched. The security, and stability of it is the best I've ever used. I only moved because well... I didn't own the license on my site. I would buy it back in a heartbeat if I needed too.
What does it matter if the community is primarily European?
Xenforo, it's fast and does not have any useless features. Unlike in the case of most other paid solutions.
In vBulletin I used to get frustrated when I had to see dozens of options and permission settings for nearly everything that I didn't want or cared about.
My motto in forum software is if you want the best free, it's MyBB if paid then xenForo all the way.
Xenforo will only get better too. It's still a young piece of software, and with the lawsuit completed they have already started quick development.
It's quite astonishing how far vBulletin have fallen. At one stage they were by far the best commercial software around, but now they're not even considered by anyone. The amount of forum owners begging for a move after vBulletin 5 is insane, and most of them are moving to Xenforo.
At onetime I would say vBulletin (3.x series) would be your best bet for gaming related communities. That had just about every modification you'd ever need, but at a cost of $249 it's not worth it IMO.
xenforo is great software, I use this now on one of my sites. Very easy to use, as someone else said since the lawsuit is over things are starting to look promising again
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(2013-03-17, 02:25 PM)Alex - Arvixe Wrote: [ -> ]What does it matter if the community is primarily European?
I think primarily German would be a better description. And it matters because most plugins and themes are in German(including the descriptions).
Which isn't bad if you know German.
(2013-03-17, 11:21 PM)Alex Smith Wrote: [ -> ] (2013-03-17, 02:25 PM)Alex - Arvixe Wrote: [ -> ]What does it matter if the community is primarily European?
I think primarily German would be a better description. And it matters because most plugins and themes are in German(including the descriptions).
Which isn't bad if you know German.
Ah right yeah I see what you mean. With them being German based how does customer service go - in terms of response times and English quality?
There software feels "different" and I rather quite like it.
Just looking at someof the official themes they sell they have some really talented designers
I've never used them. It's not that they don't have english support but the lack of a strong English community(as strong as their German one at least) has always held me back from buying it. So I'm not sure how their support is. IMO it's the best paid forum software though except for maybe IPB.
(2013-03-18, 12:39 PM)Alex Smith Wrote: [ -> ]I've never used them. It's not that they don't have english support but the lack of a strong English community(as strong as their German one at least) has always held me back from buying it. So I'm not sure how their support is. IMO it's the best paid forum software though except for maybe IPB.
What do you like about the software and what makes IPB better for you?