I think one of the big things holding back IP.Board is their lack of a robust plugin system. One thing that I have been spoiled by in vBulletin is the ability to easily and quickly create and/or add plugins and products to vBulletin. The hook system for templates and files is incredible and makes upgrading your forum painless due to less edits with files and templates. Is there any info on if IP.Board plans to make this more robust in future versions?
The plugin and style system in IPB is much better than vbulletins. You just have to learn it. It was foreign to me when I converted my first forum. Now I like it much better.
I think one of the biggest difficulties for those of us who were so familiar with vB is to just accept this isn't vB. It's a tough mindset to break. After spending a couple of days working with IPB, I just made myself forget how things are done in vB. And suddenly, I saw IPB in a new light. It was the same epiphany I had to undergo when I installed Linux on my computers. It was all so foreign and nothing was located where it would have been in Windows. When I came to the realization that I was trying to get away from Windows in the first place, Ubuntu suddenly seemed so much better. I wanted to try a forum in a new niche, but I didn't want to invest a lot of money into it until I see where it wants to go. Since I had four vB licenses sitting there idle, I set the site up on vB. And I've found I really don't care for vB as much as I thought. If IPB was just like vB, it wouldn't be IPB any longer.
I don't want it to be just like vBulletin but the mod community isn't even close to being there. I guess I still got a lot of work a head of me to break my vB mindset.
This is true and IP looks to clearly hold the potential to win the 'making major mods' category (much better than vB) however at this stage I cannot see (yet) IP ever having as many mods as vB simply because it lacks the ability to pop a few lines of php into a (vB) hook. The process of putting together an IP hook right now is more cumbersome to me than vB and I don't think that is totally down to 'the newness' of it all.
Ubuntu's great, I converted for similar reasons. To be honest with you, IPB 2.3's biggest problem was mod installation. All those file edits and such often conflicted and took too much time to do. The one workaround was a mod called the Universal Mod installer, which only required one file uploaded through the ACP. With IPB 3.0, many basic mods just require the hooks installation, which is just one XML file uploaded through the ACP. More extensive mods are now applications, which I think is great, since for me it's a lot easier to differentiate between an extensive mod and a basic one. Bottomline is that IPB does things differently, and different doesn't usually mean worse.
I happen to prefer the IPB mod and style system to the one in vbulletin. I didn't at first. Once I started installing mods I realized how much better the and easier it was to install things. I especially like the way you add a skin. No need to upload anything via FTP. It's all done in admincp.
+1 When I installed the first skin, I kept looking for the step where I was going to upload a folder full of new images.
Although the actual interface isn't changing much regarding creating hooks, IP.Board 3.1. does introduce many enhancements in what you can do with them. Josh is taking the lead on this and will be posting a blog on our forums soon. We're quite excited about this as it opens up many more possibilities.
