Hey all,

I've been doing tons, and tons, and TONS of research as
to the "best" online forum solution, and quite honestly,
there seems to be nothing better than UBB v6.7.3 -- to
the point where I'm a few days away from buying access
to the members area to snag a legacy copy of the software
before it vanishes off the face of the planet forever.

But before I do something stupid, I genuinely want to get
some feedback from others who have resisted moving to a
PHP/MySQL based version of the forum.

Actually, let me take something back... the "best" solution
that I discovered was BestBBS, a custom board used by Brett
over at WebmasterWorld. But that's not for sale.

To me, the second best would be UBB.classic v6.7.3, for the
following key reasons:

1) In lieu of having to fiddle with mod_rewrite commands,
the output generated by UBB/673 is already a flat html file
that search engines can digest.

2) I don't have to struggle with MySQL concurrent connection
issues, not to mention, having to install MySQL on my dedicated
server in the first place. (I plan to co-locate locally).

3) I'm significantly more comfortable with Perl coding than I
am with PHP... so I can theoretically upgrade and support the
legacy code far easier than I could a PHP version of the forum.

I don't know, what am I missing? Am I being crazy?! This is
an oddly emotional decision for me... and the thing is, there
already appear to be a lot of people who have no interest in
upgrading to a PHP/MySQL solution for one reason or another...

I could see us banding together and helping each other out, so
that we can continue making the most out of our forum software.

Alright, I'll open this to thoughts/comments/suggestions...

Nathan

I agree with you. I love Classic and have had nothing but issues with both PHP and MySQL.

I just wish there were more of us left.

Hi, thanks for the reply!

Yeah, I get the sense that there's a dwindling universe
of UBB.classic users... yet it strikes me as being such
an effective piece of software!

Nathan

I was with classic for many, many, many years (can you say freeware?), and resisted the urge, but a PHP/MySQL forum is far more resource friendly, especially on larger forums. Also the new features coming out are also good as well... Since Classic is EOL, it'll likely never be worked on again, hell the lead developer on the project isn't even with the company anymore...

There are significant enough people to support it, should you want to stay with it. We've discussed privately getting permission from Ted to possibly open source the code.

Hi all,

Thanks for the comments.

I agree Gizmo, it's unlikely that Groupee will do any additional
development work with UBB.classic. And you're right, there are some
challenges webmasters have to surmount when using UBB.classic if
their forums start getting statistically significant volume.

Allen, reading your comment was like a tactical nuclear bomb
going off in my brain! LOL

At this juncture, Groupee derives no direct economic benefit
from the UBB.classic line of boards -- with two exceptions that
I can think of off the top of my head.

(1) Backlinks

There are thousands of boards still out there that have the
copyright link at the bottom of their forum pointing back to
Groupee (even if it's the old infopop URL, the traffic
eventually makes its way back to the new Groupee homepage).

So in a way, it's a form of free advertising for the company.

(2) Member Area Access/Upgrades

There is a certain percentage of webmasters who for one reason
or another may decide they want to upgrade from UBB.classic to
UBB.threads. The fact that they are running a UBB.classic board
means they're prime prospects to buy member area access so that
they can upgrade/replace their current forum(s).

- - -

Current UBB.classic webmasters could potentially be upset if the
entire project is open sourced, given that they paid for access
to the code in the first place, etc. It could be one reason why
Ted might hesitant to open source the code.

On the flip side, UBB.classic is on very thin ice... According
to the Wikipedia entry for vBulletin (and we know sometimes the
information on there is suspect, but still...) the founders
of vBulletin created vBulletin v1 as a PHP re-write of
UBB.classic... And that was at a time when UBB was in its prime,
and could have easily taken steps to use litigation as a way
to bully the vBulletin founders into abandoning the project...
vBulletin was an easy target, since they were selling their
software, had revenue, and were easy to "locate"...

What I'm trying to say is that UBB.classic is susceptible to
being "cloned" -- and Groupee may not be able to justify the
logistical and legal costs of pursuing a course of protracted
litigation to try and get the "genie back in the bottle" --
especially given the fact that UBB is <EOL> and no longer even
officially sold or marketed by Groupee.

My educational background is in law, and I have an extremely
strong respect for intellectual property rights, and am not in
any way suggesting that UBB.classic code should be maliciously
cloned or modified in a way that defeats the letter and spirit
of the license agreement that presently exists.

That said, I do think that Ted and the team at Groupee could
potentially be persuaded to allow a "fork" development path
to go forward in much the same way an operation like CentOS
derived its existence from Red Hat. Actually, I'm not even
sure that CentOS could be considered a fork path, I think
they just re-brand Red Hat's stuff. I'm not sure... but
anyway, you get the idea.

Sadly, but truthfully, if Perl were an in-vogue coding language,
my suspicion is that an "unauthorized" variant of UBB.classic
would be supported and championed in much the same way as phpBB
is today... (but hopefully without the bloat and exploits that
perennially plague phpBB! )

That's all for now, sorry for such a long post!
-Nathan

'Open Source' may have been too strong a term, I meant more like a variant you were talking about, in that they would retain some sort of rights over it, copyright would remain intact, but we would be allowed to continue developing it.

I moved away from classic only because I wanted it to work with some other software (gallery, etc.) and hated paying imagefolio ridiculous amounts of money for a script horribly supported by the authors. For sites without a lot of traffic, ubb.classic more than handles what's needed.

CentOS is just a debranded RHE, no "forking" involved; Fedora however can be seen as a fork from RH.

As for rights, likely some sort of general use license retaining all rights to Groupee.

Releasing the UBB.classic code is a few years too late It should have been released quite a while ago, instead of holding onto it 'til death and shaking every last penny out of it. Groupie could have made more pennies off of service by releasing the code while .classic had some life in it, but they were short sighted.