many people change forum types for many different reasons....
I have several sites now running snitz but I also have a php forum too - just because that suits that site and server.
I think if you weighed it up though - your point is completely invalid Botnet
The amount of people who change TO snitz would in my opinion far outweigh the other. Only my opinion - but I have yet to find a more flexible, easy to implement and user friendly discussion board package anywhere.
Registered Members: 121,346 Total Posts: 4,891 Most Active Users: 40 (5 min. period)
The forum was imported from a custom 3rd party solution and "relaunched" on Sep 19th, 2003 (last month). The decision was made to blow away all the old posts and start new. The above post count has all been made in the past 19 days.
Registered Members: 130,828 Total Posts: 54,512 Most Active Users: 332 (may have been 15 min. period at that time)
When we relaunched this forum (once again imported from a custom 3rd party solution) in July of this year, we sent out a message to everyone and the response killed the forum and uncovered some issues regarding using Snitz with a large userbase. Unfortunately we haven't had that same kind of traffic since.
Note about the two aforementioned sites. The members list is pretty clean. Before the forum relaunches, the lists were cleaned/validated with the mailing list package we use for newsletters.
Other sites where Snitz was the only solution used:
Registered Members: 5,626 Total Posts: 2,604 Most Active Users: 33 (15 min. period)
While the numbers aren't significant, what's worth noting is we recently launched BeadStyle and it uses the same forum and registration system as Bead&Button. The challenge with this is that some people don't realize they're already registered for both. They register on one, then try the other and they receive the message, "email and/or username are already in use". Then we have to explain the situation.
While we don't come anywhere close to that one site's largest thread, the largest one I've seen so far (on our sites) is 567 replies -- and it's still active. It was started on 8/11 and still going strong.
The only reason I can think of why people are reluctant to switch to Snitz from other forums is that there are no conversion scripts available (either never made, or not shared), or they're very old and won't work directly with the current version of the forums. Not sure about how it is the other way around though as I've never had to (or wanted to) look into it ...
Once most people have a forum setup that's working for them, why switch? Do the benefits outweigh the hassles? It's a lot of hassle to switch to the "cool forum" of the month.
Then there's probably one group of people who probably don't want to stick a lot of $$ into their site and are looking to make it as cheap as possible. The answer for a lot of people is mySQL and PHP. For that combination, there are a bunch of free and paid forums which are well done and work well.
I also notice that quite a few of the larger / really active boards I visit tend to be vBulletin and/or Invision boards (but that may be just me). The vBulletin boards seem to be popular and handle the traffic quite well.
Another advantage with vBulletin and Invision is the option to purchase support. Those of us familiar with Snitz will say the support here for Snitz has been exceptional. However, the sad truth is there are people who permit their judgement to become influenced by cost -- perception of the greater the cost, the better the product must be. There are also people who feel more comfortable when they have a contract guaranteeing support rather than having to place their trust in the generousity of others.
Topic Locked
Posted - 07 October 2003 : 01:38:37
brujo
