DaveInDaytona
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Posts: 1696
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posted January 17, 2003 08:07 PM
Hey frEEK !
I assume you did some of the evaluation for the board here. Any big reasons you went with Blaze instead of something like vBulletin or phpbb ? I like some of the cool user features of vBulletin that aren't apparent here but I'm more concerned with admin overhead.
I'm planning a move off ez on to my own server and already set up a phpbb and I'm thinking it will work for me. Any input would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Dave
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frEEk
Administrator
ummm... yeah
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posted January 18, 2003 02:00 AM
the main reason we used blaze was speed. it was (maybe still is) the fastest board u could get. also, phpBB wasnt as prevalent then. in terms of features & aesthetics i think i'd use phpBB now. looks very slick. but i havent taken a real indepth loo at it. not sure about vBulletin. one thing which i woudl deifnitely say is don't bother payin for a BB package unless u know nothing about computers & need them to do the install.
i wouldnt recommend blaze today simply because its no longer supported (it was rewritten and renamed openBB i think). it's actually written quite badly, which makes me surprised at it's speed. liek i said, i think i'd go for phpBB from what i'v seen, jsut cause it has about all the features i'd want, looks good, has LOTS of users & support. vBulletin may be just as good for all i know. if it's perl tho, i'd pass. i prefer perl as a language, but for web applications liek this perl is a waste & will be slower.
hope that helps some, tho i doubt it. if ya have any particular questions or whatnot, dont hesitate to ask.
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DaveInDaytona
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posted January 18, 2003 08:10 AM
Thanks, that does help. I was hoping there wasn't a big "DON'T DO IT" reason for picking one of the others and it looks like there isn't.
I installed both phpBB and vBulletin just for a comparison. I wanted to look at vBulletin because .ws and .net uses it and there are some cool user features that I didn't see with the other ones. Even though the cost, $160 to "own" it, doesn't seem like a lot I can't see it's that much better. If I had tons of users and forums then I'd go that way just because it makes it easier on the users but that's not the case for me.
LAB seems to be having good luck with phpBB and it's probably because it looks like it an out of the box install. My experience with SQL has been pretty much limited to MS's versions (don't hate me for learning something that will make me money) but that doesn't seem to be stopping me from understanding mySQL.
You are right too about the forums and support for phpBB. For freeware there is enough support for just about anyone and enough people out there that have done about any mod you'd ever done and are willing to share it. Hell, I can even pull the posts from my ezBoard and put them on the new one very easily. It's better than most of the commercial stuff you pay big money for. That may be the part that sets it apart from the others, looks like I'll go that route.
I think I've bored everyone else to death by now. Thanks again for the help.
Dave
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frEEk
Administrator
ummm... yeah
Posts: 9660
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posted January 18, 2003 12:56 PM
yeah $160 aint bad, and since it is a fairly wide spread package u'r not gonan get stuck with one of those commercial packages that some hisghschool smoe just threw together & convinced himself that it's worth good money. but php seems to have the edge in popularity in my experience.
as far as SQL is concerned, u should ahve no problem with is. mysql is mostly ANSI sql, possibly more so than any other DB jsut cause it doesnt have alot of the extentions other vendors use, even fairly standard stuff like transactions (which are jsut recently available in mysql but its a bit of a klooge). as to learnin something that makes money  fortuantely mysql (and more recently posrgresql) has kept my bank account afloat too. u'll find that once u learn sql u can work the basics on ANY of the DBs, and the extensions dont take long to learn at all. but this is all really irrelevant cause u shouldnt need to dive into the DB with phpBB anyway. it's only necessary when u start hacking ur board like i'v done, and that's mostly jsut cause blaze is so feature poor taht anything we wanted, i ahd to add myself. damn POS.
hope the transition works well for u and hope ya got a good host. there's plenty of good quality low cost hsots these days (kinda sux to be in teh hosting business frankly!)
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swft
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posted January 18, 2003 03:00 PM
I really like php, what would it take to move this board to it?
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frEEk
Administrator
ummm... yeah
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posted January 18, 2003 08:09 PM
it is php. but not phpBB if that's what u mean.
in terms of movin to phpBB, it would just be a matter of time to make the switch. i'm willing to bet it would be a rather intensive process gettin everything moved over, especailyl since ther's unlikely to be a conversion tool from blazeboard. i'd certainly like to do it someday, just wont have time for a few months
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DaveInDaytona
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Posts: 1696
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posted January 18, 2003 09:36 PM
Thanks for the good wishes. The more bullet proof I make it the less I will have to work on in, and I'd like to fire it up, set up some automated backups, and forget about it. (I'm dreaming I know, but it's worked at most of my customers sites)
I don't think I'll have any SQL problems. Most of the kind of stuff I want to do all I need to know is what NOT to touch more that what to change. phpBB is set up to make the modification easy.
It's amazing how cheap you can get a host for nowdays and how good they are. The place I have my web site is really quick and it has everything set up to make it easy to do the board work. I wouldn't want to be in the hosting business either, way too little profit in it anymore. I'd be interested in the db size and monthly transfer you run here if that's not confidential.
Oh I checked and there is an "official" openBB to phpBB conversion too so if Blaze is now open it may work, but there are some older Blazeboard to phpBB's there too. I wonder how clean it works with the old version. I'd bet it's been done.
If it was me running things here I'd let it run a while longer before I took on that kind of conversion unless there was a driving factor to do it. I hate changing things just to change them. Now I don't live by that motto, I just give it out. My stuff changes all the time just so I can learn new ways to break things.
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frEEk
Administrator
ummm... yeah
Posts: 9660
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posted January 19, 2003 01:32 AM
cool! good news about the conversion tool being in place. indeed this owuld not work on openBB, as openBB was a complete rewrite of blazeboard. but if there is a specific blazboard tool, then that's cool. course i'v hacked the site up so much by now that i'l prolyl have to hack up the tool too :|
yeah, there are pretty decent hosts out ther efor cheap these days. but alot of the cheap hosts are still shit too, so it's a fine line. the kicker with all those "unlimited" bandwidth hosts out there for $6.95 is that they cram so many accounts on a machine that u couldn't squeeze out more than like 50G a month if u were goin full bore 24/7. well, taht and the biggest hosts are gonna be payin under $0.10 per G, if not less. some of them (i believe hostrocket is one) are aparently owned by the backbone providers (WB in the example's case i believe), so it's practically free. as to our bandwidth... i'm not sure i have an accurate number, but about 5G a month is the last number i saw. as to space requirements, i'm even less sure about that. the site aint big certainly; the DB is 43M using a not very compact dump. keep in mind that low monthly figure is laregly a result of my trimming down the html ALOT. woulda been about 15G defore i did so. i'm not sure, but i suspect phpBB will be a bit of a bandwidth hog too, jstu cause it's yet another case of everything to everybody, plus has all those features like icq & aim status on every post etc. that kinda stuff adds up real fast.
anyway, good luck with the install, & let me know how phpBB works for u. i definitely want to upgrade one of these days, just wont have time for a while.
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DaveInDaytona
Pro
Posts: 1696
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posted January 20, 2003 05:25 PM
It's up and running, all the posts are converted, the users are getting on and setting up their info. It looks like it went well.
Stop by when you get a chance. If you set up a user you can change the colors, only 2 choices so far. I'm saving some of my time to cover any issues that pop up.
http://www.daytonasportbikeriders.com/forum/
There's lots of little custom things that I want to do as time permits.
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Zhooligan
Moderator
Post Whore Extraordinaire!
Posts: 3829
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posted January 20, 2003 06:17 PM
My hat is off to you tech guys. You are amazing.
Thanks again Freek for doing the things you do to keep this board running.
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has touched them in the past and how much it can hold in the
future; -- Youth is forever.
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swft
Needs a life
Full throttle!
Posts: One MEEEEEELLION
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posted January 20, 2003 06:31 PM
Hey Freek,
Gimme a shout via email, might have a line on some storage if you are interested...
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frEEk
Administrator
ummm... yeah
Posts: 9660
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posted January 21, 2003 02:11 AM
u have mail
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