Note: This is a re-post with pared down requirements. I realize that I
asked for a bit too much info in my last question.

I am researching customer support discussion board vendors for a large
and fast-growing product. Below is a list of preliminary requirements
that I have:
- Features: permission-based system (users can gain/lose priveleges),
user ranking/reputations, post ratings, user banning (ip, email,
username), moderation (add/edit/delete) or report bad post feature,
bad language filter, reporting (most viewed posts, user reports,
etc.).
- Scalability: Must be able to support millions of users.
- Implementation: Preferably not overly-complex or too time/resource consuming.
- Design: Must be flexible so that it can be uniquely branded.

I am looking for a two part answer. First, please include a list of
the top 5 vendors to consider, along with the following details for
each vendor:
1) Name of the company, name of their discussion board product & URL.
2) What differentiates this product?
3) Do any major corporations use this product? If so, what are some
examples of current implementations?

Secondly, please also provide some details about which vendor (if any)
was used to develop the following customer support forums:

1) Tivo: http://forums.tivo.com/pe/index.jsp
2) Dell: http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums
3) Ebay: http://pages.ebay.com/community/boards/index.html
4) Apple: http://discussions.info.apple.com/
5) Motley Fool: http://boards.fool.com/Index.aspx

This is also time sensitive, so a response by Thursday (7/22) evening would be
much appreciated. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!

Hi, chirpy. Thank you for your question.

All of the below forums easily meet your needs, and they all have an
active community which provides plug-ins and additions. They generally
require PHP and MySQL, unless otherwise stated.

The five most popular discussion board systems seem to be the following:


+ The Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB)
  Developed by Infopop Systems (http://www.infopop.com/)
  Available from http://www.ubbcentral.com/
  
This was the most popular forum software available a few years ago -
the 'classic' version was the most powerful program available at the
time. There are two versions available, the perl 'classic' version,
and a newer php version.

According to http://www.ubbcentral.com/compare.php, unique features include:

- 'Wordlet(TM)' - Allows you to customise all text from the control panel
- 'OneCommunity(TM) Integration' - Allows the board to get user
information from various different databases.
- The ability to automatically make topics from another document or headline.

InfoPop have also developed various other pieces of software for
online communities, such as Eve. These are detailed on
http://www.infopop.com/.

Clients include:

http://messageboards.weather.com/3/OpenTopic?
http://uk.playstation.com/user/forums.jhtml
http://www.mtvasia.com/ubbthreads2/ubbthreads.php
http://news.ft.com/comment/discussion
http://www.channel4.com/community/



+ vBulletin
  Developed by Jelsoft Enterprises
  Available from http://www.vbulletin.com/
  
This is one of the most popular and powerful boards available today.
It is a PHP script, and has many different add-ons available. There is
a demo of the admin interface available at
http://www.vbulletin.com/admindemo.php.

According to http://www.vbulletin.com/features.php, some features are:

- Post and user reputation
- Calendar features
- Allows paid subscriptions through PayPal, WorldPay, etc.

Some clients include:

http://webhostingtalk.com/
http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/
http://vbulletin.newtek.com/
http://www.englandfc.com/vbulletin/
http://forum.hivemail.com/
It is also used by a large number of the bigger web hosts.

  

+ phpBB
  Developed by phpBB as open source
  Available from http://www.phpbb.com/
  
This is one of the largest free forums available. The fact it's free
and open source does not mean it is low quality; it is one of
vBulletin and UBB's strongest competitors, although I do not know how
well it would cope with several million members. A demo is available
from http://phpbb.com/demo.php.

It does not appear to have any unique features that are not available
in other forum software. However, being open source, it is easy to
expand, and many people have done so. There is a huge range of
additions that can make the forum do pretty much anything. There is a
guide to creating add-ons available at http://phpbb.com/mods/.

Some clients include:

http://www.espnvideogames.com/community/forums/

I can't find many big clients using it; it is mostly used by smaller
companies and sites. If you wish, I can provide a list of small sites
that use it.



+ Jive Forums
  Developed by Jive Software
  Available from http://www.jivesoftware.com/products/forums/
  
This is a slightly more obscure, but still feature-rich forum
software. It seems to run as a JSP application.

Features include:

- Searching Attachments
- Buddy lists
- Keyword notification and moderation
- Post rate limiting

Some clients include:

http://www.nintendo-europe.com/NOE/en/GB/community/
http://www.shell.com/tellshell/
http://forums.java.sun.com/
http://devforum.openwave.com/



+ InvisionBoard
  Developed by Invision Power Services
  Available from http://invisionboard.com/
  
This is another powerful PHP board. There is an infinate free trial
available, but to get access to the more advanced modules and to
support, you have to pay.

Some features are:

- MySQL Tool Box
- User warning
- 'myAssistant' which provides links to common pages

Again, I cannot find any larger sites that use it, although I can
provide a list of smaller sites if you wish.



As for the discussion boards you listed, I have tried to find out who
developed them. However, the majority seem to have been developed by
the company themselves (unless I missed something)

+ http://discussions.info.apple.com/

This site is powered by WebObjects, Apple's own java web application
development system (more information is available at
http://www.apple.com/webobjects/). Apple uses the same system for
powering their .Mac service (http://mac.com/). As far as I can tell,
it was developed by Apple.

+ http://pages.ebay.com/community/boards/index.html

The software appears to be a java application developed by eBay. This
was probably necessary, since it is so tightly integrated into eBay's
site and accesses the eBay main user data.

+ http://boards.fool.com/Index.aspx

Again, this forum software appears to have been specially designed by
fool.com, as it is totally integrated with fool.com's user
registration and login.

+ http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums

This forum was developed by Lithium Technologies
(http://www.lithium.com/). The product Dell uses seems to be the one
mentioned on http://www.lithium.com/messageboards.asp.

+ http://forums.tivo.com/pe/index.jsp

As far as I can tell, this forum was developed by Participate Systems,
and is called Participate Enterprise. More information is available at
http://www.participate.com/pe/participate/software/community.jsp. The
forum software is also used by Logitech (http://forums.logitech.com/).

I hope this was of use. If you have any questions about this, please
do not hesitate to request a clarification.

-- wildeeo

---

Request for Answer Clarification by chirpy-ga on 22 Jul 2004 09:59 PDT

Hi Wildeeo. Thanks for the prompt response. However, to be honest, I
was looking for a little more detail for $50.

After reviewing this info, I was hoping you could help clarify a few
things for me. Below are my questions:

- You mention that UBB was popular a few years ago. Is there a reason
that they are not as popular now? Is there a reason users are not
using their product as often?

- Is UBB a customizable product? -- or does infopop implement UBB for others?

- Participate Enterprise is new to me. Would you be able to provide an
overview of their standout features & client list?

- Some of the boards you included seem more bulletin board-esque (like
phpbb) and not great for implementing a large scale customer support
discussion board (interaction between the customer support team and
customers). If you had to narrow this list down to 2 vendors, which
would you recommend?

Thanks in advance for taking the time to clarify these few issues.
Also, I did some research of my own and found that Ebay's forum was
implemented by Liveworld and Apple's was done by WebCrossing.

Best,
Chirpy

---

Clarification of Answer by wildeeo-ga on 22 Jul 2004 11:35 PDT

(I added this as a comment first time round, sorry.)

Ah, sorry, I missed the eBay and Apple boards. My apologies.

Firstly, UBB. UBB comes in several forms; there are Perl and PHP
versions, which clients download and install on their servers
(although Infopop will install it on your server for you, or host it,
for a price). There is also 'Eve', which is a suite of community
software hosted by Infopop, which includes UBB (as well as a chat
program and premium membership module).

The downloadable forms of UBB are customisable, and there are many
modifications available (for example, the site
http://www.threadsdev.com/forum/modindex.php?Cat=0 lists a fair few).

UBB is not as popular now primarily because of the choice people now
have. In 1998, there were few choices for anyone wanting to add a
forum to their site; they had to settle with a text-based,
user-unfriendly board, or the much more powerful UBB, which offered
things such as easy user registration, easy moderation and user
management, and so on.

However, one big disadvantage (or advantage; it depends on your point
of view) of that version of UBB is that it generated an html file for
every thread on the board. If you had several thousand (or hundred
thousand) threads, it can become a real problem managing them. Also,
at that time, development of UBB slowed, and as PHP boards started to
emerge, people switched to them as they had features that were only
available as (sometimes unreliable) third-party modifications to UBB,
such as private messaging. Many also offered an unrestricted free
version, which UBB did not. (They did offer a much-limited free
version, though).

Participate Enterprise is different to many of the other solutions in
that it is a complete support solution. As well as a discussion forum,
it has the ability  to be a knowledge bank, natural-language search
engine, document library, offer content subscriptions, and whatever
else you need it to do.

Participate Enterprise has the following major clients:

- Cisco's NetPro
   (http://forum.cisco.com/eforum/servlet/NetProf?page=main)
- Mercury Interactive Support
   (http://support.mercury.com/cgi-bin/portal/CSO/index.jsp)
- LogiTech Support Forum & Knowledge Base
   (http://forums.logitech.com/)
- AT&T Worldnet Community Port
   (http://chat.att.net/)
- Microsoft The Zone (Zone.com)
   (http://www.memberplushq.com/, members only)
- palmOne PluggedIn
   (https://pluggedin.palmone.com/regac/pluggedin/index.jsp)
   
As for recommending two boards, I would suggest Participate Enterprises because:

- It is designed to provide support services for companies
- It could be designed and customised to meet your needs
- From the example case studies, it would be more than capable of
coping with your large user base

Or Jive Forums, because:

- It has additional modules that are useful for support (knowledge
base, for example)
- It shouldn't have a problem coping with your user base.

Lithium Technologies' solution might work for you, although their site
has little information on it, so I hesitate to suggest it. The other
boards could be made to work, although a few of them would probably
require extensive modification.

I hope this helped. If you have any further questions, please request
another clarification.

-- wildeeo

Ah, sorry, I missed the eBay and Apple boards. My apologies.

Firstly, UBB. UBB comes in several forms; there are Perl and PHP
versions, which clients download and install on their servers
(although Infopop will install it on your server for you, or host it,
for a price). There is also 'Eve', which is a suite of community
software hosted by Infopop, which includes UBB (as well as a chat
program and premium membership module).

The downloadable forms of UBB are customisable, and there are many
modifications available (for example, the site
http://www.threadsdev.com/forum/modindex.php?Cat=0 lists a fair few).

UBB is not as popular now primarily because of the choice people now
have. In 1998, there were few choices for anyone wanting to add a
forum to their site; they had to settle with a text-based,
user-unfriendly board, or the much more powerful UBB, which offered
things such as easy user registration, easy moderation and user
management, and so on.

However, one big disadvantage (or advantage; it depends on your point
of view) of that version of UBB is that it generated an html file for
every thread on the board. If you had several thousand (or hundred
thousand) threads, it can become a real problem managing them. Also,
at that time, development of UBB slowed, and as PHP boards started to
emerge, people switched to them as they had features that were only
available as (sometimes unreliable) third-party modifications to UBB,
such as private messaging. Many also offered an unrestricted free
version, which UBB did not. (They did offer a much-limited free
version, though).

Participate Enterprise is different to many of the other solutions in
that it is a complete support solution. As well as a discussion forum,
it has the ability  to be a knowledge bank, natural-language search
engine, document library, offer content subscriptions, and whatever
else you need it to do.

Participate Enterprise has the following major clients:

- Cisco's NetPro
   (http://forum.cisco.com/eforum/servlet/NetProf?page=main)
- Mercury Interactive Support
   (http://support.mercury.com/cgi-bin/portal/CSO/index.jsp)
- LogiTech Support Forum & Knowledge Base
   (http://forums.logitech.com/)
- AT&T Worldnet Community Port
   (http://chat.att.net/)
- Microsoft The Zone (Zone.com)
   (http://www.memberplushq.com/, members only)
- palmOne PluggedIn
   (https://pluggedin.palmone.com/regac/pluggedin/index.jsp)
   
As for recommending two boards, I would suggest Participate Enterprises because:

- It is designed to provide support services for companies
- It could be designed and customised to meet your needs
- From the example case studies, it would be more than capable of
coping with your large user base

Or Jive Forums, because:

- It has additional modules that are useful for support (knowledge
base, for example)
- It shouldn't have a problem coping with your user base.

Lithium Technologies' solution might work for you, although their site
has little information on it, so I hesitate to suggest it. The other
boards could be made to work, although a few of them would probably
require extensive modification.

I hope this helped. If you have any further questions, please request
another clarification.

-- wildeeo

Thank you for the clarification and for taking the time to find these
examples. They are very helpful.