My (used to be) favorite bulletin board software, Invision Power Board is pretty powerful. The framework of Invision Power Board is fairly stable, and easy to mod.
However, recent releases of IPB (2.1.x) have been so buggy that 2.1.0 was virturally unusable, and they have since then (september) gotten to release 2.1.5, in 1/2 of a year. 2.0.x had releases up to 2.0.4, but that was after one year. 1.3.x, only had versions up to 1.3.1, and I’m actually not sure about 1.0-1.2.
The AJAX in 2.1 has been less useful to users than the AJAX in vBulletin 3.5, in my opinion. In IPB 2.1, to edit a post, you have to click on the edit button, then select between “full edit” and “quick edit”. If I was an end user, what the heck is the difference? I wouldn’t know. Plus, one extra click is annoying. In IPB 2.0, you just clicked edit, and it would do what full edit does now, and vBulletin by default does quick edit. If I modded my copy of IPB 2.0, I would do it the vBulletin method.
Also, vBulletin has a “AJAX quick-reply”, meaning that users don’t have to refresh the page to reply when using the quick reply. IPB 2.1 still refreshes after replying, and the unofficial modification that does that doesn’t work as well as vBulletin’s method of doing the quick-reply.
Lastly, in IPB’s profile view, take a look at the difference between how they organise it in IPB 2.0, and IPB 2.1. Not much difference, is there? Wait. Look again. The “profile options” is a dropdown menu in IPB 2.1, and just links in the profile in IPB 2.0. What did they do with the extra space on the webpage? Nothing. Now there’s a huge gaping blank space in the profile in IPB 2.1. Flame me all you like for this, but extra clicks for simple tasks are a no-no.
Overall, I prefer IPB 2.0 better than 2.1, and if you do buy IPB, get 2.0, or even better, get vBulletin. IPB is going downhill.
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March 23, 2006
Unfortunantly, yes. IPB was pretty cool, but, instead of trying to make it better for the user, they’ve attempted to make it more profitable for themselves. In the end, it’s screwing IPB over. 1.3 is still pretty good, though. Eventually, however, PHPBB and such will pass that level, and IPB will fade into nothingness…
1.3 is still pretty good, too. I think 2.0 is more convienent, and easier to mod. I’m not really sure, but I’ve gotten used to 2.0, and yes, 1.3 and 2.0 are both good. 1.3 seems faster though. 1.3 was good for a free BB.
Unfortuantely, I disagree about PHPBB. PHPBB has promised the next version, PHPBB 3 (formerly named 2.1), for two years now, but has not finished development. Who knows when they will finish, but they do have a good mod base because it is old.
But, leave my ranting to future posts 
March 24, 2006
I meant that by, when PHPBB finally gets better than IPB 1.3, which it will probably be the last to do so, IPB will loose a whole lot of support. And you have to spend $200 on IPB 2 to be able to mod it. 1.3 allowed you to mod from the start.
If I start another forum, It’s going to be vBulletin. And that says something. I didn’t like it before.
Also, take a look at this website which is a directory of all BB’s that have over 500,000 posts.
http://www.big-boards.com/statistics/
With everybody using RSS import bots…IPB forums will soon be in the 500,000 post club.
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