Hi -- we're running UBB.classic now on our Forums, and our server is just getting crushed with the load. We're considering switching over to a dedicated server running UBB.x -- and I wanted to get an idea from you folks of how happy you've been since the move. We've been completely thrilled with UBB.classic -- how does UBB.x measure up, in terms of user-friendliness, performance, features, etc?

Any thoughts welcomed -- as well as any examples of great UBB.x forums out there!

Thanks --

David VanHook
Wine Spectator Online
www.winespectator.com

I have to say I like it for the most part more than ubb.classic, but also have to be honest and say there have been bumps along the way.

We were one of the ubb.x boards on a less-than-stellar server (which just got upgraded a couple of weeks ago) and our up-time (remember, we're hosting this now at Infopop) was less than 98% before the upgrade and during the upgrade we lost most of a 18-hour window. So our September uptime will probably be around 95% or so. But it's been smoother since the upgrade.

There are many great features on ubb.x, starting with a robust admin area. There are some features that get introduced in ubb.classic first and that we're still waiting for on ubb.x but looking at your board, I'm guessing it would be a good transition for you. One nice thing is you'd be able to move your 3300 members and current posts over fairly seamlessly.

You can check out my board at the link below--we have just under 5400 members with as many as 70-80 online at one time and I think the performance has been much faster since making the switch several months ago.

I'm hoping that as more boards join the ubb.x platform, changes to the ubb system will be made first to ubb.x and then to ubb.classic! And keep in mind, we don't have to upgrade the board ourselves, which was always a pain if you have mods.

I'd say I would rate ubb.classic about an 8.5 on a scale of 1 to 10 and right now I'd rate ubb.x about a 7.5, but am hoping it passes ubb.classic within the next 6 months.

Moderator of www.twinstuff.com

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Originally posted by avatar22:
I'd say I would rate ubb.classic about an 8.5 on a scale of 1 to 10 and right now I'd rate ubb.x about a 7.5, but am hoping it passes ubb.classic within the next 6 months.

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Same here for me, I am happy with UBBx, the hosting is a little bit expensive for me, but thankfully with my advertising program, it pretty much covers my hosting cost.
Yes I would really like to see UBBx, gets first shot at the upgrades before Classic.
I still have my classic to use as a back up on a diff server that hosts my actually site.

http://www.guyanafriends.com/6/ubb.x

quote:

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Originally posted by winehook:
Hi -- we're running UBB.classic now on our Forums, and our server is just getting crushed with the load. We're considering switching over to a dedicated server running UBB.x -- and I wanted to get an idea from you folks of how happy you've been since the move. We've been completely thrilled with UBB.classic -- how does UBB.x measure up, in terms of user-friendliness, performance, features, etc?

Any thoughts welcomed -- as well as any examples of great UBB.x forums out there!

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David: The first thing that I noticed when switching from .classic to .x was the speed of searches. The speed increase in using an RDBMS (MySQL) over classic's flat-file architecture is pretty impressive. Overall, .x has most of the features found in .classic. It does lack a few of the features (Custom Graemlins are coming soon), some are slightly different, and then .x has some features classic doesn't have.

User-Friendlyness: The UBB.x user interface is almost identical to UBB.classic, so your users wont have much, if any, difficulty with a switch. Both UBB.x and OpenTopic should be getting a new UI later this year.

Performance: UBB.x uses a MySQL database to store its data, rather than flat-files like .classic, so you will get better speeds, as well as features that you wont find in .classic such as view counters for topics.

UBB.x has built in statistics, support for customizing the look through XSLT (dedicated-servers only), plus you have access to the database, so you can integrate other parts of your site into your UBB.x member-base.

Let me know if you have more questions or if I left out any details you'd like to know more about.

<-- Happy Admin

Our customers seem very pleased, and I know this Administrator is. Since snagging a dedicated server running UBB.x, we've had 99.9+% availability, great response time, and very responsive support from Peter, Dave and the rest of the folks at Infopop. [/cheerleading]

Actually the switchover, from a technical standpoint, went well, but the difference in the user interface between UBB.x and UBB.threads caused our customers some temporary pain. However, with the continuous improvements in UBB.x and the increased stability of our new board and server, all that is long forgotten.

From my perspective, I spend almost *zero* time supporting the board and the server, and can now focus on growing my site (and trying to figure out innovative ways to help pay for it).

The scalability of this product so far is amazing. Over the last three days, here are some stats of note for our board:

• Posts - 2,458
  
• Page Views - 594,430 (from the UBB.x Community Metrics page, my own tracking software reports a lower value)
  
• "Online Now" users have held pretty steady during the day and evening between 200 and 400, dropping off late at night.

All of the above stats were achieved with simply *no* perceived degradation in performance. I can't tell (from the board responsiveness) whether there are 400 or 4 users on line at any one time. It feels the same at this load point.

This is a big deal for us, as this spring we left a box that had to be rebooted twice a day due to the load we were putting on it, and now (going into the basketball season next month), I am actually enjoying seeing the number of users, posts and page views skyrocket.

I know many sites are probably having the same luck with other flavors of Infopop products, but Phog.net is happy right where we are.

BTW, Dave. Don't you really need *another month* to reevaluate the bandwith monitoring?

Tom

Phog.net: Where the Jayhawks Hold Court!

Sounds like a bunch of happy customers!

Clean as a whistle, sharp as a thistle, best in all Westminsta'!

LOVE IT!!

It is the BEST!! We have a kind of "Bargain Hunters Shopping Site" www.CrazyCoolDealz.com and we LOVE as do our users!! It is the BEST move/deal we have EVER done!! It is the CRAZIEST COOLEST deal ever!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Come to see our site!!

CrazyCoolDealz.com

See UBB.x in ACTION!!

Overall I'm happy with it.

I'm paying less than i did previously, it seems to be up most of the time, runs quite quickly...the admin areas are vastly improved from UBB.classic....new features like Private Topics and Featured Topics are great etc...

My only gripes are:
- not allowed to add extra smilies
- it putting the URL when you quote a message with an image
- signatures not being 'separate' from the post
- polls not as good as UBB.classics

though i know the first 2 should be sorted in the next major release