Oh David

[Tommy Boy]

There's nothing wrong with using a free forum program. It can look just as professional as VB.

If you ask me, I think we could use a little change, instead of looking like every other VB forum out there.

 

[Lowndsey]

So why does the software HAVE to be updated then?

 

[root]

Well the only main hack we use is to auto merge any double posts. It also looks like my old customer logins at vbulletin have been removed so there is no option to updated to a later 3.x.x version

Personally if I visit a forum that runs a free forum software it just looks hugely unprofessional, vb is the standard people expect.

I guess it comes down to the community, some people want it and some don't

I'm fairly sure that option wuld also be available for other forums software IF you went that route.

I disagree that free forum software looks unprofessional, forums built around the default theme of MyBB, or PHPBB look unprofessional, But the simple answer there is to just not use the default theme.

There's nothing wrong with using a free forum program. It can look just as professional as VB.

If you ask me, I think we could use a little change, instead of looking like every other VB forum out there.

with a little effort it could also just look exactly like VB, there is no reason that you couldn't skin the forum to look exactly like this one, regardless of the forum software that it's running.

So why does the software HAVE to be updated then?

it doesn't HAVE to be updated.

just as with any software, the more old the software the more exploits and bugs will be found in the forum software, the less the vendor wants anything to do with you (i.e it becomes unsupported).
after a while there will be a new version of the web server software and a new version of the database software, except this version of VB might not support them and upgrading those might break this software, so then you're also stuck with outdated database/web server software, and more and more exploits turn up for those too...

it's not imminent failure or anything like that, just you'd want to update on the same kind of basis that you would want to update your desktop OS when that became old and unsupported.

and as I said before, if you're bored of paying for windows, then why not try Linux? just replace windows with VB and linux with alternative free/cheaper forum software.

 

[~NeonFire372~]

If we went the free forum software route, I'd choose SMF over phpBB and MyBB. YMMV