Why did we switch from vBulletin to Discourse? I could write a wall of text but it can be distilled down into three main reasons:
- Cost
- Ease of Use
- Maintainability
Discourse is FREE while vBulletin is quite expensive. We do pay a small hosting fee for the server we use for Discourse, but it is a significant savings.
Everyone is different, of course, so ease of use can be subjective. I know the first thing I do every day when I log into the forums is to try to find the latest posts on the site. Frankly, this function is broken on vBulletin and they show no inclination to fix it. On Discourse, you can set your default view to show the latest posts every time you log in, or you can click on the New button on the top menu. I could also list all the other broken or missing functionality in vBulletin (e.g., joinable groups, member list) but again the list is long and boring.
Finally, the admin functions in vBulletin are simply teh suk. It takes hundreds of man-hours each week from the admins and staff to keep vBulletin from falling over. I realize this pain is not felt by the majority of our members, but acquiring and retaining quality staff is the key to keeping OTG running smoothly. It is in the best interests of everyone in the guild to keep the staff from burning out because of forum maintenance. They should be enjoying the games with all of you, not beating their heads on the wall trying to get something done on the forums.
We understand that not everyone enjoys change and we’re here to help you through this transition. We hope you will eventually embrace our new forum home…but will settle for tolerance.
Feel free to ask questions and make suggestions for improvements as well. Another important reason for the change is that we have the ability to modify Discourse to suit our needs. We have recruited a talented staff of techie nerds who live for this stuff.
I should also note that the existing vBulletin forums are not being deleted. We will keep them in a read-only archive state. We are investigating a way to migrate them or at least a portion of them in the future.
A longer explanation can be found here.
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