You want the good, the bad, and the ugly! Well here it is!

[WedgeAntilles250]

The Good
I like the ease of installation that YaBBSE has.  It is great.  The admin is great, powerful and very organized.

Overall, YaBBSE is a great free forum.

The Bad
YaBBSE has no skinning capabilities.  There is no way that you can drop in a skin file and import it into YaBBSE.

Modifing the look for YaBBSE is horribly difficult to do.

The Ugly
Come on, this forum doesn't even match the power of vBulletin.

Lets have user groups and user group permissions as powerful as what is contained in vBulletin.

Sub-forums.  Gots to have that.  Jese, this is the one thing that I need, but no one has made this as good and as close to what it is in vBulletin.

Also, come on, lets include a way of posting that is similar to writing something in Microsoft Word.  Yes, thats right, WYSIWYG.

I want to see some revolutionary changes to YaBBSE when version 2.0 comes out!  I want YaBBSE 2.0 to make heads turn and make people think "Jese, why did I pay for vBulletin when I could have all of that functionality for free?  DOH!"

[Daniel D.]

First
Don't say that again, try to make these things yourself !

Second
You don't have to use YaBB SE !

Third
Do you know what 2.0 brings ? No ? Ok, so "be quiet" and come again when 2.0 is ready...

[David]

Daniel, I think he raised some good points.  Thanks for the feedback and Chris Cromer just released a skinning mod.

[Nemesis]

Another day in YaBB SE drama continues....

The Good
I like the ease of installation that YaBBSE has.  It is great.  The admin is great, powerful and very organized.

Overall, YaBBSE is a great free forum.

Thanks!

The Bad
YaBBSE has no skinning capabilities.  There is no way that you can drop in a skin file and import it into YaBBSE.

Modifying the look for YaBB SE is horribly difficult to do.

There are several mods that improve the look of YaBB SE, and if you think modifying YaBB SE is difficult send me an IM and I show you an board I am working on that took me little less then a couple days to modify that blows the socks off most SE boards, and it wasn't difficult to do at all.

The Ugly
Come on, this forum doesn't even match the power of vBulletin.

Lets have user groups and user group permissions as powerful as what is contained in vBulletin.

Sub-forums.  Gots to have that.  Jese, this is the one thing that I need, but no one has made this as good and as close to what it is in vBulletin.

Also, come on, lets include a way of posting that is similar to writing something in Microsoft Word.  Yes, thats right, WYSIWYG.

• First off VB boards have been out for about 6 years. We are in our first year of production.
• VB is commercial base, has a dedicated support team and coding team that gets paid for their work. YaBB SE is coded from volunteers. No one is getting paid here at all.
• Sub-Forums are in the works for YSE2, you can demo it at one of my sites. Click Here
  
• You want WYSIWYG? I don't know about you but I think what I type is what I get? YaBB SE is not a word processor, we are a free message board system, and what I am typing is what I except will show up.

I want to see some revolutionary changes to YaBBSE when version 2.0 comes out!  I want YaBBSE 2.0 to make heads turn and make people think "Jese, why did I pay for vBulletin when I could have all of that functionality for free?  DOH!"

YSE 2 has a lot of features, all the things you want, well maybe accept the word processor feature.  

Bottom Line:
Things here are being done for free. No one is getting paid, there is no 24/7 paid tech support here.

YaBB SE is made successful from contributions from users and volunteer coders.

The real questions should be what have you contributed to SE?

If you want features help make them. I have been with YaBB and YaBB SE for a while now. When I came to this I barely know anything about PHP and Perl. YaBB and YaBB SE I found were very flexible and the community here is very supportive. They help me learn some PHP and PERL to the point I started contributing in adding new mods that extending the features of YaBB and YaBB SE. Some which are now included in the current releases 1.4.0 +. I help put together 1.4.0 and 1.4.1 and will help out in YaBB SE feature releases. I have over 20 mods to my name that extend the features of YaBB SE. I have been coding development codes for feature releases and trying to pave the path and raise the standards for feature SE looks/feels/ and features. I do all this without being paid. I am a very busy man with several e-commerce sites under my name, and several personal sites; One that will be co-existing with YaBB SE soon. Plus I hold a full time job. Why do I do this? Because I love SE and want to contribute to the SE community for the free boards and all the help they had given me. I want to pay them back the same way they help me out by contributing and helping make the board better for everyone.

So I ask you... How have you helped contributed to SE?

[Jeff Lewis]

First, I feel all feedback is good feedback.

Second, there are a few screenshots of a fantastic member permissions system which is more powerful than vBs.

Joseph spent a good deal of time coding this thing which was quite nice

Sub forums are also in the works for this forum which has been out just under a year.

Also, as for skinning we can't win. People say if we change the single template file, they will be pissed. Some say if we don't go to a trillion template files then it's not customizeable enough...

Oh if we could all find a happy medium Thanks for the feedback, it's greatly appreciated.

[WedgeAntilles250]

Second
You don't have to use YaBB SE !

I still think that YaBBSE is better in terms of ease of use and modification.  I have yet to see a board with a built-in MOD tool.

As for making the mods, hmmm.....never thought of it.  Just never seemed to have the time between work, school, and doing other things in PHP and MySQL.  Also, the mod making system, there has got to be a utility that I can download to make the YaBBpak files easier to develop.

I am college student, so most of my time goes into working so that I can pay college and thus not go into debt.  Come on, you guys must remember the college days, the poor college days in which you open your wallet and butterflies come out.  lol

As for the user permissions and the sub-forums MOD, where are they?  I have yet to find them listed on this board.  Are they in YaBBpak form?

As for helping out the YaBBSE cause, I have sent an IM to the CEO of my web host to see if he would like to host and sponsor the YaBBSE project like he did for the ttCMS Project.

I have talked to the CEO of my web host.  He has made the offer to sponsor the YaBBSE Project.  He has contacted Jeff Lewis about this idea.  Time will tell.

Oh, and one thing about this sponsorship, free disk space and free bandwidth.

This is what I am talking about.  It is the very last post, made by rochen.

[Jeff Lewis]

Thanks, I've emailed him

[ajk]

Sub-forums.  Gots to have that.  

YaBB SE is not a word processor, we are a free message board system, and what I am typing is what I except will show up.

So I ask you... How have you helped contributed to SE?

The sub forums would be a great idea.  It will make boards like mine less cluttered.

Word processor, maybe not, but a spell checker built in would be very nice.  ;-)

As far as contributing, I'd love to.  But I'm not a programmer per say.  I do build web sites, edit php and cgi scripts and basic image files.

I could offer hosting space and test site space.  I'd also be willing to be a beta tester.

Regards,

[Greg Robson]

I want to see some revolutionary changes to YaBBSE when version 2.0 comes out!  I want YaBBSE 2.0 to make heads turn and make people think "Jese, why did I pay for vBulletin when I could have all of that functionality for free?  DOH!"

If you want a revolutionary board then you'll have to wait longer!

[ajk]

If you want a revolutionary board then you'll have to wait longer!

Good things come for those of us that can wait.  

[Leviathon]

it seems better

[John R]

Well, Chris C. has finished the Skins Mod and it works great.  There is already a Sub Forums Mod finished and available in the Completed Mods Board if you had taken the time to look for it.  As for the permissions system, like it's been said, wait for version 2

More importantly though, is the mindset involved with YaBB SE.  You state that you want something more powerful than VBulletin, then let me ask you this, are you prepared to pay as much as you would for VBulletin?  I thought not !  Keep in mind that YaBB SE has been developed for FREE by volunteers that have donated hours and hours of their own time and knowledge to produce something worthwhile for you to enjoy, all for free.

cheers..........

[Nemesis]

LOL, Global Moderator thinking alike.  

WedgeAntilles250, I am glad you are digging in and trying some modding.  

Thanks for your feedback also!

[Brad]

I would be more then happy to pay $100/year for YabbSE 2.0 if I got technical support.  I started my site off as a hobby and did not want to pay for something at the time.  Now I have 700 members and growing and would like to see more functionality similar to vbulletin.  I have thought about switching but I do not like the idea of starting all over again.  So I wait patiently for the next version, so far I have been very happy with what YabbSE has offered for free.  As the internet grows and bulletin boards become more popular you start to see more and more features being offered.  Its hard to ask for more when it is free,  you can only suggest and hope that you get it.  I barely have time to work on my own site having a full time job and all.  I can't imagine the hours that go into creating these boards.  If you guys ever decide to charge for a more functional version I will be one of your first customers.

[Greg Robson]

You might have to patient with version 2 - but when it arrives I'm sure you will like the functionality and performance.