Ok... So now that the primary web-site is up and running and happy... I'm toying with another idea that involves a forum. Now I've looked into vBulletin, and infoPop, and all the others... they all cost $... then I look at http://forum.snitz.com/ (Snitz2000) - it's OS (open source, free) and seems to do all the same things.

So, my question, why do others choose to pay?

I'm really wondering.

Thanks, Dan

They pay for more features and a more reliable script. Vbulletin has a very powerful administration console. I would recommend you check out some of the other free ones. Personally I would not go with snitz as I never really liked ASP. The forums I have listed below are very popular.

http://www.invisionboard.com
http://www.phpbb.com

I think Snitz is more a W2K board and is pretty reliable.

if you wand features like vb but cheaper check out www.woltlab.de

Snitz is a verry good asp BB. I used it but it's slow like others asp BB.

I've used Snitz before and it was very good indeed.

It took a little to understand at first, but there is also http://www.magicmushroom.org.uk/ which is a portal system based around the original snitz code. Again, very good indeed. But remember, these are in ASP.

DM :)

I guess this means php is much faster than asp?

I don't think that is the case on W2K

I was just saying... in general. :)

Web Wiz forums are known to use less resources than Snitz.

www.webwizguide.co.uk

ASP is slower than php, cgi. Snitz is slower than vbb, phpBB, ubb. Test it in 56kbps.

ASP is fast for me, im running a win2k box

Looks like phpBB is the way to go from what I've been reading here and elsewhere...

Seems like you can really mod it too! ;)

Thx for the help!
Dan

I'd choose InvisionBoard over phpBB any day, in my experience it's faster and more efficient.

If you are going the "free" route I would reccommend phpBB, and some of my members really like Invisionboard as well.

If you are looking for more general "un-biased" information regarding forum software and development, or how to get your community started check out www.forum-forum.com.

I've been MODding for Snitz for several months now. There were several changes to the base code recently with the new version that speeded the entire forum up. And changes from ASP 2.0 to ASP 3.0 is also supposed to provide increased performance. Unfortunately, ASP 3.0 appears to only be available for Win as I believe the Linux versions of ASP are still running on ASP 2.0. As for BB's, I'd have to say Snitz is the best ASP forum out there. There are a ton of MODs available to Snitz, some of which are included in other forums. You can basically get the same functionality with Snitz as other forums and more, but you'll have to add some MODs. So now it just depends on preferences and whether you're on a Win server or Linux server.

asp is faster that php on a windows box. php is an isapi dll on windows, and asp is inherent to IIS. php code is "externally interpreted" by the dll