Oh my god. Who else hates that site's forums?

I always come off like an ass there because I try and hurry because its just so frustrating being on that site, but it commands so much of the mudding world…

The forum could be redone, yes. But it's better than no forum.

TMC should get vbulletin. They can afford its bloated price.

Or they could use QSF, which is free. =]

While I agree that TMC's forums could stand some serious improvements, it's not really the forums that are the problem there as much as the abundance of trolls.

Or Phpbb. :D

However, Vbulletin is…amazin', if I could afford it I would buy it for all of my sites, but I can't. I'm one poor bastard. I've got cracked version of it but I don't run it because I actually will buy it once I can save up the money, whereas if I use the cracked one I'd prolly never get to it.

QSF > vBulletin > phpBB

See, the problem with this is that it's subject to personal preference. Personally, I'm not overly fond of vbulletin or phpbb particularly. I do happen to like QSF, but currently use invision myself.

personly, I use QSF, its the best out there, its continuing in development, all the time as you all know, and the creators are always accepting bug reports and quickly patching them to aid in the future of the product, and of your forum.

Go QSF!

Well, I use QSF daily when I visit Mudbytes, AFK forums, & the FUSS Project.. and I know I've contributed to it's ongoing development by pointing out bugs and stuff. :wink:

I hate PHPbb I ran it at one point on muddomain but it has so many security flaws its impossible to keep up. Personally QSF is the best i've seen and that includes vbuliten. Plus its not popular enough to have the hacker communities attention yet.

I doubt I need to make my preference known here :)

Can't honestly see a reason to pay for vB or IPB. Not when you can find perfectly good forum packages with those features for free.

I don't much care for the forum system TMC uses, but that's Andrew's choice. TMC's real problem is the troll factor.

See, that's how I feel too.. in fact, pretty much what I said back at the beginning of this thread too.. :lol:

I can see why andrew uses it. Sure its not the latest and greatest but he wrote it from the ground up its a pride factor. We all think our code is the best.

You know, there's always the possibility, too, that he simply likes it the best of what's currently available and feels it does everything he wants/needs it to do, and given that it's his own creation, he may also not want to deal with the conversion process involved in switching to another forum code. Ultimately, it is his forums, so he'll use what suits him best.

Yes, well TMC has alot of other problems, too, like advantageous search results for IRE and donators, which I find disgusting. The forum is amazingly annoying to me. It logs me out every time I leave the site no matter what I do. Finding the right topic is next to impossible and posting is a pain.

As per other forum softwares, QSF is for people that enjoy simplicity. Its a very simple script, which means its secure because there is very little to be unsecure. IPB are for people who enjoy total and absolute complexity, from forums with Round based fighting to online gambling. Vbulletin is for people who want something VERY solid that can support literally thousands of users fine, as I've seen it do that. Phpbb is for people who like open source communities. Most of the mods written for it were not written by their mod team. And as far security issues I don't think its so much that it has alot more, but rather that its being scrutinized by every hacker out there- which makes no sense as most hackers like open source projects.

Personally, I like Phpbb because mods are -contantly- coming out for it. Daily. Not to mention if you go to thei site and say…hey…this script would rock if it had -blank- in a week someone will release it, or pull up a link to where someone's already done it. I also like the way phpbb looks. Check the link in my sig and you'll see what a phpbb forum with a portal attatched looks like, or go to www.freespeechwiki.com/forum to see one of my other sites which has a very complex forum theme installed with blog hosting intergrated right into the forum, one of the many mods released by users.

QSF is very elegant. It's fairly easy to do *anything* with it. I've integrated a lot of my MUD into my QSF site (http://drazon.wolfpaw.net).. but we are now wayyyyyyyyyyyyy off topic, perhaps we should split the thread into another one discussing forum software? O-o.

I am hoping the TMC guy will see this post and get ideas. Maybe? Any chance?

While I agree that giving donors advantageous search results isn't really right, and sucks for those of us who aren't donors, I see it as a "you get what you pay for" deal, if I became a donor, I'd enjoy that perk too. *shrug*

Odd, I haven't been auto-logged out of TMC's forums in well over a year now, even when I reboot my machine, maybe I just never purged his cookie?

I don't have any problem finding the right topic there, but then I mostly just read the daily summary in my email and click on the links within it to respond to something. But I do agree that their posting screen could use some improvements.

Regarding your take on other forum software.. aside from the fact that you've omitted a few dozen forum softwares in your statement.. I'll again point out that it really comes down to a matter of personal preference, and not nessecarily the ones you've listed either.

Personally, I've got a copy of phpbb here that I've played with and really don't care for, so until I decide that I'm unhappy enough with IPB (which is what I currently use, and does not allow me as much control in some regards as QSF would) to switch to QSF, I'll stick with what's working fine for me… Which may very well be Andrew's basic position as well.

That's not such a bad idea, Kiasyn. Of course, the flip side of that is that the original poster is the one who brought us so far off-topic.