IPB4 / xF: 2015's opinions?

[Rasty]

What can Woltlab do better? All Woltlab boards I've seen so far all look the same and have annoying pop-ups everywhere.

My Woltlab site has no pop-ups ever.

 

[jekyll]

^ This is finally a WBB with a distinctive design. Nice.

 

[jekyll]

I've (finally) been playing with the IPB4 suite for half a day now and am deply impressed. Everything's so clean.

Now if they would finally get the BBcode editor right, next time my xF needs a renewal, I'll throw a dice.

 

[tomk]

I've (finally) been playing with the IPB4 suite for half a day now and am deply impressed. Everything's so clean

jekyll What stood out for you, and what are the things you like best about it?

 

[jekyll]

tomk I can't really decide which certain thing caught my eye. I might write down a couple of notes here though (from a XenForo user's POV, phpBB would be an unfair comparison).

First impression (front-end): Everything's kept tidy. It looks professional and well-thought, especially when being compared to the other "major" paid board systems. I can't remember having seen such a clean, good looking default template before. Well, MyBB's 1.8 drafts went into a similar direction but they were already much more colorful. Where XenForo tries to set its accents with little spots of color and round borders, IPB has dark, noble squares all over the place. Very easy on the eyes. The status updates area is awesome; while I (personally) wouldn't need it, I can't remember having seen a more powerful (built-in) one yet. Oh, and I like the lack of things that open in JavaScript layers immediately. Finally I can move my mouse without accidentally having to look at other things.

First impression (admin area): This board system surely seems to be built for companies rather than individuals. There is a large Dollar sign in the settings, allowing me to set "commercial goals" and payments. Nice to have if I'll ever want to make money with a forum. That said, the whole admin area does things quite a lot better than XenForo. XenForo and its add-ons can (in my very own opinion) be a bit annoying with its settings in not immediately obvious submenus. This part of the IP.Board takes into consideration that today's desktop screens are becoming wider and wider while still being responsive. The split into a "main menu" on the left side and a "submenu" on the right left side does not waste my wide screen space, on my smartphone (and when I make my desktop browser small enough) it all lands in a "burger menu" without losing functionality or clearness. Nice.

Second impressions: It seems to be virtually impossible to make a bad looking IPB theme. However, since the Community Suite is still young, the grayson was obviously right. The (former) "official" German support forums don't have much v4 activity yet, which is quite different from the xF scene where everyone seems to run new beta versions whenever they come out. IPB's price tag is very hard though. I guess I'd start with a not-so-new license if the dice tells me to.

Now if they only brought back the BBcodes.

(I just noticed my typo. I'll let it stand here for ashaming reasons.)

 

[Sherrie]

Popups can be disabled and the sidebar can be customised, you can choose all sorts of things to have in there or not have it at all.

 

[TimeDev]

I am between the 2 right now, I think Xenforo is a better forum but I love the IPB completeness with official addons. I really dont want the mess of the vBulletin era where you had to use a lot of plugins to add stuff back in (caveat I know I would need addons for both but major features like CMS are nice if they are official) and hoping it all works. The major niggles for IPB for me are some things are too basic because they have not seen them as important enough, no importer... and performance isnt anywhere near as epic as Xenforo currently. They also have search system issues which they are promising improvements in September but its all a bit slow. I have seen 2 big sites move across and 1 had a few issues but generally the userbase was happy and the other was a bit of a disaster with hate from all the users after so its a mixed bag.

 

[PacMan]

ZeroHour Which big sites are on IPB 4?

 

[doubt]

(caveat I know I would need addons for both but major features like CMS are nice if they are official)

IPS:
Pages: hard to manage without programming experience.
Gallery: Very basic.

 

[TimeDev]

ZeroHour Which big sites are on IPB 4?

Neowin.net is probably the largest one out there, I am not sure if they are full suite or just the forum only though,

 

[xtech]

IPS:
Pages: hard to manage without programming experience.
Gallery: Very basic.

It is true, but IP Pages is probably the best thing out there in terms of power and flexibility. You need to understand the IPS system first.