SO expensive for what it is. Its just a tiny bit of code. Why??? Its not like its involved in the database or email stuff as the domain host does all that. Or have I missed something?

Yeah. It's expensive but it's all ready made and works pretty much out of the box.
The expense is paying for all of the hours of development.

You gotta pay for the UBB people purchasing WWWthreads. I'm sure that wasn't cheap.

Because people are prepared to pay that much for something that works that well.

PHPBB

I don't think that's the case. All of Infopop's products are ridiculous when compared to any free alternative. I don't see the advantage, personally. You could do a lot with the money you save on setting up your own boards.

It took a couple hours for me to set up phpBB the first time (mostly working with my web server, something you'd have to do with Infopop's products), and gets easier every time.

If you're making a board for your friends and/or family, or a small web community, I can't see why you'd go with them.

But I seem to remember hearing that phpBB isn't as great with a large community and larger tables, that it slows down too much.

*edit*
The first time I signed up for web hosting, I signed up with Infopop and got a working message board right off the bat. I hated it. Its control panel was unintuitive, the interface was clunky, and the charge was astronomical (relatively speaking). I think I was paying $30 a month for merely fair hosting privileges and a set up BBS. Doing the math that's $360 a year. I dropped the service in less than 5 days, went with another hosting company, and now I pay $70 a year for a better BBS (IMO), and better hosting.

If it's so 'tiny' it shouldn't take you more than a few hours to imitate. It'll be a good cash earner.

Because people are prepared to pay that much for something that works that well.

The cheaper ($169 vs $199) version of UBBThreads appears to be a false economy, by the way. Rio are using it for the private Karma beta testers' board, and it never works right. Although I guess that could be bad setup rather than bad underlying software.

Peter

The cheaper ($169 vs $199) version of UBBThreads appears to be a false economy

Is it just that the cheaper one is the original UBB product, and the more expensive one is The Product Formerly Known As WWWthreads?

In reply to:

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But I seem to remember hearing that phpBB isn't as great with a large community and larger tables, that it slows down too much

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Seems drupal has some pretty big communities without major problems.

Sorry i should have clarified a bit - if you buy ubbthreads and don't put it on their server, do you get any extra services from them? Or do you pay for the code and that only?

I mean do the admin and password emails come from them or your own domain host?

Also do they keep tabs on who is using the package on what sites through 'spy code'?

Your host would most likely just provide you access to sendemail. In other words, if an email is being sent off as a result of someone interacting with UBBthreads, it (your installation of UBBthreads) is most likely generating a mail object and send that mail off through the sendmail server. Most of the work in that case is really being done in the UBBthreads code. Of course, I don't know exactly how UBBthreads works, but that's how most every other web based software I've worked with sends emails. As far as the DB stuff goes, most likely your web host would allow you to create a MySQL database that your install of UBBthreads would use.

IMHO, I don't think the price of UBBthreads is all that outlandish. I imagine the code base is probably pretty extensive. I've never seen an install of it, myself, but I can only imagine. I use PHPBB on my own server like others have mentioned, but PHPBB is lacking in features. For instance, there is no attachment functionality in the basic install of PHPBB. That functionality is only available as an add-on. Assuming you haven't done any customization of the themes available for PHPBB, then the add-on is relatively simple to install. Otherwise, it's a matter of going through all the diffs and applying the changes to all the php files manually -- quite a pain. I like the default graphics that come with PHPBB a lot more than UBBthreads, though.

- trs

FudForum (http://fud.prohost.org/) is pretty good. And free.