Hi everyone,
Have a task to build a community site. To put simply: 50% of features will be forum, community faq with voting, the other 50% will include e-zine, maybe some kind o a shop, link directory, user rating and etc, not much social networking stuff.
I am leaning to Commons installation, but it is not exactly what I want to start with.
Now before I start I face a dilemma: build forum part of the site with phpbb, ipb, vbulletin, smf and other forum software and then build the other functionality with extra plugins, maybe integrate with Drupal, wp, joomla OR build with Drupal/Commons from scratch.
Please share your opinions and facts:
-Can Drupal 7 installation have comparable performance on similar server with lets say IPB or vBulletin or phpBB or whateverforum? Lets start with 500-1000 posts/nodes per day on forum. Server tuning is not a problem, BOA and High performance groups are very helpfull.
-I do not want to mess with industry standards - does anyone know a good example of Drupal forum site, where the look & feel of the forum is more or less similar to the popular forum scripts? As close as possible.
-Is there a ultimate forum module to rule them all?
-Please, do not point to those Symantec or Mercedes-Benz community websites, those are a bit different calliber ;)
-Other recomendations are welcome...
thank you
Comments
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If you go pure Drupal, the closest that you'll get to the standard forum look and feel right now is Advanced Forum. That's built on core forum, though, which has known performance issues. Caching will get you a long way but forums tend to have a lot of authenticated users which are hard to cache for.
If you are building a very forum heavy site where users are expecting standard forum software then, as much as I hate to say it, you'd be better off using a bridge to vBulletin than going with Drupal's forum.
Unfortunately, Artesian is still too far out unless this project has a very long timeline. :(
Michelle
New Forum
Do you have any ideas on what to look for in testing a new forum before it goes live?