Anyone here buy Fusetalk?????????

[marketsons1985]

nd, i've only seen that message 1 or 2 times in my time (bout 8 months) at anandtech.

might be a 56k thing or something.

 

[thirdkind]

<< Thirdkind did, for his website (he's still in version 1.x). I would link to his site, but I don't think the mods would appreciate the content >>



I've been using 2.0 since they released the official version. If you stopped by once in a while, you'd know that And as far as content goes, stop by the main page and see the big blank white space. That's what happens when the webmaster takes a breather for the holidays and the date stamps on the news posts causes them to be archived

As far as features are concerned, FuseTalk is a great package. It's also very stable, being based on CF and databases, as opposed to CGI and text files like UBB. Of course, since you need to have a hosting service that supports ColdFusion (or host it yourself with CF Server), the cost is higher. Also, if you plan on making any changes to the code itself, such as adding features or tweaking the layout, you'll need to shell out ~$300 for the source code version. The standard version is encrypted and non-hackable. As you can tell by using it, however, in its short time on the market, FuseTalk is a more feature-rich and better developed product than the UBB.

If you're looking for a ColdFusion hosting service, I recommend Media3. Very fast, and their prices aren't too shabby.

 

[Shazam]

<< What makes Fusetalk great about high traffic situations? Haven't you seen the &quot;Forums are experiencing extremely high traffic&quot; messages practically every morning? Fusetalk seems to have quite a lot of features, and I don't think it scales very well (which is understandable considering the number of features and the fact that it runs on a NT IIS site with coldfusion).

A PHP based message board will likely scale much better. >>

Umm, no. The server message that gets encountered every now and then can be caused by a multitude of problems. Unfortunately, the error message is not that helpful.

vBulletin uses mySQL, which, IMHO, is a POS. No transactions, no subqueries. Awful, awful.

 

[Rendus]

<< nd, i've only seen that message 1 or 2 times in my time (bout 8 months) at anandtech. >>



I see it almost daily, from work (T3) or home (1.5/384 DSL, 512/128 cable). And the forums are generally not as responsive as I would expect, but I suspect that's got something to do with the NT/IIS/CF/MSSQL combo.

 

[DABANSHEE]

&quot;...I tried Ubb, which is like an exact clone to VBulletin, and I didnt like UBB, so I am guessing I wont like Vbulletin&quot;

Ah, dcpsoguy, I think its the other way arround, both VBulletin &amp; Fusetalk are clones of UBB. Aferall UBB seems to have been arround a lot longer &amp; the text coding of the 2 newer inclinations seem to have been based on UBB's text coding.

Here is the example of Arstechnica's UBB2 OpenForum (actually if you have really technical problems Ars's OpenForum is the place to go, its even better than Anand's Forums, in that regard, anyway) &amp; the example of HardOCP's VBullentin HardForum

 

[MisterM]

What DABANSHEE wrote is correct, UBB is the original, and VBulletin/FuseTalk are the (IMHO superior) clones.




<< Here is the example of Arstechnica's UBB2 OpenForum (actually if you have really technical problems Ars's OpenForum is the place to go, its even better than Anand's Forums, in that regard, anyway) >>



This is not entirely correct, as ArsTechnica is using OpenTopic, not UBB. OpenTopic was created by the same people that created UBB, so it's an easy mistake to make, but OpenTopic is a more expensive (IIRC), and more stable version of UBB, created for high traffic forums (probably as an alternative to FuseTalk).

edit:
BTW, if you decide not to buy FuseTalk you could give IkonBoard a try, it may not be as good as FuseTalk or OpenTopic, but it's free...

 

[dcpsoguy]

I agree. Fusetalk is much better than Vbulletin and UBB. Better features, better layout, stronger customer support, etc. Thirdkind, enable pm's so i can talk to you.

ANybody else who has fusetalk pm me.

I didnt like IKONBoard very much

 

[DABANSHEE]

&quot;<< Here is the example of Arstechnica's UBB2 OpenForum (actually if you have really technical problems Ars's OpenForum is the place to go, its even better than Anand's Forums, in that regard, anyway) >>

This is not entirely correct, as ArsTechnica is using OpenTopic, not UBB. OpenTopic was created by the same people that created UBB, so it's an easy mistake to make, but OpenTopic is a more expensive (IIRC), and more stable version of UBB, created for high traffic forums (probably as an alternative to FuseTalk).&quot;

Actually I think when OpenTopic 1st came out it was called UBB2 as that was the name OpenTopic had when Arstechnica was beta testing it.

I 'know' that because my old Arstechnica bookmarks say 'Ars OpenForum powered by UBB2' &amp; that still goes to their current Opentopic board, whereas my original Arstechnica bookmark (which says 'Ars OpenForum - powered by UBB') goes to their old databass then gets redirected to their new forum. My lastest ArsTechnica bookmark says &quot;Ars OpenForum 2.0a powered by the OpenTopic&quot;.

 

[MisterM]

<< I didnt like IKONBoard very much >>



Yeah, it's really nothing breathtaking, but it's free, so it is a good alternative to the more expensive fori (Is that the plural of forum?) if your on a budget.



<< Actually I think when OpenTopic 1st came out it was called UBB2 as that was the name OpenTopic had when Arstechnica was beta testing it. >>



I must have somehow missed that, I just wanted to correct the small error in your post because it could have been misleading.

 

[Dynamix3D]

I definately think Fusetalk is the best BBS I have ever used.

 

[thirdkind]

dcpsoguy, PM enabled. Fire away.

 

[nd]

<< vBulletin uses mySQL, which, IMHO, is a POS. No transactions, no subqueries. Awful, awful. >>

MySQL is extremely fast, but it's essentially an SQL abstraction layer for a file system. It will have transactions and row-level locking real soon now, but until then you can always use Postgresql or Interbase if you want the more advanced database features.

I'm not defending vBulletin (having never used it), I'm just pointing out that Fusetalk does not scale very well (for whatever reason, like I pointed out -- Cold Fusion/NT/MSSQL/IIS probably isn't helping it; combined with the large featureset). A PHP based message board is preferable to me (using MySQL for smaller sites, or postgresql for larger ones).

 

[dcpsoguy]

bump

 

[Shazam]

<< MySQL is extremely fast, but it's essentially an SQL abstraction layer for a file system. It will have transactions and row-level locking real soon now, but until then you can always use Postgresql or Interbase if you want the more advanced database features. >>

Yes, and believe or not, even Oracle works this way. An Oracle database is nothing but one farking huge file and some tenny support files.



<< I'm not defending vBulletin (having never used it), I'm just pointing out that Fusetalk does not scale very well (for whatever reason, like I pointed out -- Cold Fusion/NT/MSSQL/IIS probably isn't helping it; combined with the large featureset). >>

Mostly false and wrong. My old company's intranet had FIVE THOUSAND users with Cold Fusion/IIS/NT. The problems encountered here are probably because of:

SQL Server.
Bad coding.

 

[nd]

Shazam,

<< I'm not defending vBulletin (having never used it), I'm just pointing out that Fusetalk does not scale very well (for whatever reason, like I pointed out -- Cold Fusion/NT/MSSQL/IIS probably isn't helping it; combined with the large featureset). >>



<< Mostly false and wrong. My old company's intranet had FIVE THOUSAND users with Cold Fusion/IIS/NT. The problems encountered here are probably because of: >>


Heh, 5000 users. /me thinks your idea of scalable isn't the same as mine. Have you ever used Solaris?

I agree that the problems encountered here could be solved with DB/coding issues, but it's not the only bottleneck by far.

 

[Shazam]

That was with ONE server. With a response time to each user of <5ms. So, not too back for ONE box. Each month had easily over 15 million hits. BTW, that was SIMULTANEOUS users.

My current project using CF will handle 100,000 SIMULTANEOUS users.

Do you actually think PHP and mySQL (or any of the other &quot;free&quot; DBs you mentioned) can handle that?

 

[dcpsoguy]

Anyone??

 

[dcpsoguy]

Anyone??

 

[Warpo]

dcpsoguy, it seems as though you have already made your decision with comments like &quot;I agree. Fusetalk is much better than Vbulletin and UBB.&quot;.Anyhow, I am a big VBulletin fan myself. It is written in PHP, which is fast, and continually getting faster with the zend optimizer, not to mention open source and completly free.Regarding support for VBulletin, I ask you to go here. That is a board with 2202 members, with 51654 regarding the software. I am sure if you have problems, and forget to RTFM, I am sure SOMEONE there will help you.The support for VBulletin is continually growing (just as support for PHP is), and hacks for the board are continually being produces (Check out the Code Hacks forum at the link above). I am trying not to be biased because I do like Fusetalk and some of it's features, but I have not seen many hacks available for fusetalk.I cannot speak for Fusetalk, but I do know that VBulletin is template based, thus making is VERY easy to design the bulletin to fit into your current site design (an example of this is here.The best of luck in choosing your board. My recommendation goes to VBulletin.

How ironic LOL, just as I go to edit a post, my message seems to be compressed together, rather than spaced out as it use to be. Sorry if it is a little hard to read now.

 

[Bignate603]

Anand does his research well and he picked fusetalk, hehe

 

[Warpo]

I doubt Anand considered any other board.

 

[Pepsi90919]

fusetalk was developed for anandtech, Bignate603.

 

[Fandu]

I'm kinda surprised no-one mentioned that the &quot;Forums busy&quot; message you've been getting is not because of IIS/CF/Fusetalk or anything. They were having HD problems in the DB server. Now fixed. You people should visit the Forum Issues more.

As for the MySQL debate. According to the designers behind SourceForge, when working with multiple 10-20,000 line scripts and DB's, their Quad Xeon 500 processes about 30 requests per second. Or about 500,000 pages a day based on a 2X load differential. Postgresql, it processed around 400,000 a day based on the same formula.

Cold Fusion seems to be quite powerful, and had worked well for Anand. Remember he does have quite a server cluster behind the website, and another 2 servers and 1 DB server for the forums. I think a coder as good in PHP as Zuni is in CF would put the two platforms about equal.