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Welcome to hell
Pros: Stay away from this like it is the plague! Or better yet, try asking your host about phpbb before you download it. When I first asked my host about it, they told me that the software was full of bugs and that I was probably better off with something else. But I couldn't find anything else at the time. Now I wish I would have listened. The whole system seems like it was designed and is now run by 5 year olds. And I guarantee you'll run into a new problem every week, regardless of your history in web design. Most of the things that you think should come standard in the software, aren't included. Instead, you have to download 10's - 100's of modifications just to set the board up to make it useable... ergo, some of the mods like the the descriptive time zone mod. Something as simple as time zones that list more than just GMT +1, 2, and 3 hours should be built into the software. How many people can tell you what GMT timezone they're in without further instructions? On their so-called "support forums" about 90% of the people there think mods like that should come standard and become exasperated thanking the person that made the mod. But they still wouldn't consider making it a standard feature if you stabbed them in the eye with the idea. There are dozens of other 'mods' that you would think should be built in but you wind up putting in months to install yourself. They have a mod called Easymod which is supposed to install everything for you. But more often than not, it fails.
Cons: And none of these modifications are 'easymod compliant.' They have a system set up to tell you if it is compliant with easymod and they do sometimes 'validate' the mods with the auto-installer, but they aren't actually sure if it's compatible. Therefore, the system never gets used and you really can't tell if it's going to ruin your whole board or not... until you install it. Trying to get help from their support forums, is like trying to get money to rain down from the sky. It's almost impossible. They have a search feature set up to go through (over 1,000,000 topics) but it doesn't work. More often than not, you'll run into a blank white page or be presented with 1 page of completely unrelated topics that gives you the option of going to one of the other page choices at the bottom of the screen, which leads to a blank white page. So now you're only choice is getting help from them directly. Oh, you don't want that... Good luck finding the right forum(s) to put it in. If you put it in the Support forum, they'll tell you it's a Dicussion problem. But if you put it in the Discussion forum, they'll tell you it's an operator error. More often than not though, they'll just tell you said something wrong in your message and lock your topic. They couldn't be any less friendly. You sometimes may get lucky enough to have another visitor of the forums answer your question for you but most of the time, those questions either go unanswered or they're received with hostility. Having phpbb is like having three wives. Imagine the stress that would bring, or just download phpbb and see for yourself. But you've been warned.
Posted: 11-Aug-2006 02:58:51 PM
