Battle of the Forum Software Extended
Entry posted by memoryproblems
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I've taken the blog post I made last night about forum softwares that power alliance forums to another level. For those of you who didn't read that entry, I started it to discover which forum softwares were most prevalent. For this installment, I've surveyed another 69 forums, which brings me to 169 total. I attempted to look up forums for all alliances listed in the in-game alliance list, (which is limited to alliances with at least 20 members. Not included were those with domain or server issues (Athens, The Sasori Initiative), forums which I could not find (AcTi, The Southern Union, Venomous Larvae, First Earth Battalion, States of United Nations and Rome), alliances that had merged (The United Front, Facepunch) and applicant affiliations (WTF, ODN, TOOL, Sparta, Wf and IFOK)
In addition to surveying 69 more forums, I also distinguished versions for phpBB, IPB, and vBulliten and collected stats the best I could of the appearant hosting locations (whether self-hosted or service) for the forums. A spreadsheet with the statistics in more depth (broken up in sections of 20 alliances), as well as the alliance by alliance list of forum location, software, version and hosting solution is available here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AvDCiRBt9GOndDdQZkRjTFV2c3ZfY2gzamVaVXNfTnc&hl=en
I've evaluated which software powers the forums. The top numbers are softwares with all versions included (for example, IPB 1.3 and 3 are together in those numbers), the versions are separated for the bottom.
Forums by Software, all versions included
1) Invision Power Board - 71 (42.0%)
2) phpBB - 40 (23.7%)
3) Simple Machines Forum -33 (19.5%)
4) ZetaBoards - 15 (8.9%)
5) vBulliten - 5 (3.0%)
6) myBB - 3 (1.8%)
7) ProBoards - 2 (1.2%)
Forums by Software, versions counted seperately
1) phpBB v3 - 39 (23.1%)
2) Invision Power Board v3 - 38 (22.5%)
3) Invison Power Board v1.3 - 33 (19.5%)
4) Simple Machines Forum v2 - 19 (11.2%)
5) ZetaBoards - 15 (8.9%)
6) Simple Machines Forum v1 - 14 (8.3%)
T7) myBB v1 - 3 (1.8%)
T7) vBulliten v4 - 3 (1.8%)
T9) ProBoards - 2 (1.2%)
T9) vBulliten v3 -2 (1.2%)
11) phpBB v2 - 1 (0.6%)
I also evaluated where the forums were hosted. Of the 169 forums, I surveyed, 109 (64.5%) appeared to be self-hosted (as in, those who possess them set them up and manage them on independent hosting), and 60 (35.5%) of them were hosted on external services. A list of the external services is listed below, the percentages listed is the percentage of all forums which that service hosts.
Forum Services
1) Invisionfree - 26 (15.4%)
2) ZetaBoards - 15 (8.9%)
3) ForumMotion - 7 (4.1%)
T4) FreeForums - 3 (1.8%)
T4) jcink - 3 (1.8%)
T6) darkBB - 2 (1.2%)
T6) SMFforFree -2 (1.2%)
Interesting statistics, hope that you find them as interesting as I have.
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