Companies that use phpBB/mySQL for Customer Support forums

[wwswimming]

my brother is a VP of marketing or something for a Skype-type start-up.

he just made a comment that phpBB is an early-90's technology. he tends to advocate using Twitter & Facebook for customer support.

just out of curiosity - what companies use Forum software (e.g. phpBB/mySQL, Fusetalk, VBulletin, First Class, etc.) for customer support purposes ?

i know Asus has customer support forums. (side-note - i hear that their customer service sucks.)

what other companies use this category of software ?

he said i should look at Twitter, so i did. it says there's a 140 character limit on "tweets". is that right ? i would think you would need longer messages to communicate on customer support issues. i was thinking their was a soft-mod that allows companies to use Twitter for cust. support, but with longer messages.

 

[13Gigatons]

email or helpdesk is what I use the most followed by a public forum.

Facebook and Twitter are for PR.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: wwswimming

my brother is a VP of marketing or something for a Skype-type start-up.

That was everything you needed to know, right there. VP of "marketing". Twitter and Facebook can be great tools for marketing and advertising. Horrible tools for customer support.

 

[Nothinman]

Yea, if a company pointed me to Facebook for support I'd run to look for a replacement.

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Yea, if a company pointed me to Facebook for support I'd run to look for a replacement.

I would probably hesitate only long enough to write down the name of that company, and give it to all of my friends and associates, with a strongly worded recommendation not to pursue any business with that organization.

phpBB *is* a technology that's older than dirt... but it's better than twitter/facebook for customer support issues. I'd at least find a better forum software, though.

 

[Nothinman]

phpBB *is* a technology that's older than dirt... but it's better than twitter/facebook for customer support issues. I'd at least find a better forum software, though.

Yea, I doubt I'd even consider phpBB these days.

 

[wwswimming]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

phpBB *is* a technology that's older than dirt... but it's better than twitter/facebook for customer support issues. I'd at least find a better forum software, though.

Yea, I doubt I'd even consider phpBB these days.

better forum software = Fusetalk, vBulletin, etc. ?

i had the impression that phpBB had an active developer community & that recent versions are 2008-2009 vintage.

i was thinking about betting my brother that phpBB is just as modern as Windows Vista. also that it's useful in customer support.

i was going to go a 2:1 bet for $20, with a $20 bonus if i win both bets, and a $100 bonus if he ends up using any forum software or recommending it to a client in the next 2 years.

but i need citations & evidence to win the bet.

found this at phpBB.com ~ from some guy called "the Finn" who apparently was one of the original developers.

??? - what forum software would you use, if not phpBB ?


http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?p=135543

Jun 17 2000: I sit down at my computer and think to myself: 'Gee..my website needs a forum'. Since, at the time, there wasn't much out there in the way of PHP based forum software, other then Phoum which I dispised. I decided to create a PHP version of UBB (vB existed at ths time but I had never heard of it). That night I was up untill about 3am and managed to get posting/replying and topic/forum lists done.

July 1, 2000: I posted this topic at DevShed asking for help testing my new application. At this point it was, for the most part, fully functional with the basics of a forum and a rough admin section.

http://forums.devshed.com/showthread.ph ... ight=phpbb

July 15, 2000 phpBB went into CVS at sourceforge and we really started working on 1.0 propor. That month intrest from some people brought Nathan Codding and John Abela onto the team and we started hacking away.

Aug 14, 2000 phpBB.com was registered and we got our first real site up. Untill that time it had been hosted on my own server at totalgeek.org (now gone).

From there it started to steamroll. phpBB v1.0-BETA was released and a PHPNuke module was built out of it. That got us alot of attention from the PHP crowd and the userbase started really building.

December 16, 2000: phpBB v1.0.0 was released. With this release BartVB joined the team and started major work on 1.2 though 1.4. After the 1.4 release (or perhaps it was 1.2..I can't remember) Paul joined the team, he had been hacking phpBB majorly for his own site and was very interested in some of our ideas for 2.0. At this time Frank also joined the team along with Jonathan who was a convert from the BlazeBoard camp who didn't like where that was heading.

Feb 17, 2001: phpBB v2.0 was started in ernest. We had been having major conversations about it since the release of 1.4 and this is when the ball really got rolling on it. phpBB 2.0 was in development for 14 months, in that time a TON of work and discusion went into the project. Doug joined the team shortly after 2.0 was started.

April 4, 2002: phpBB v2.0 is released...and I think you know the history from then on.

 

[her209]

Originally posted by: wwswimming
just out of curiosity - what companies use Forum software (e.g. phpBB/mySQL, Fusetalk, VBulletin, First Class, etc.) for customer support purposes ?

VMWare

 

[aequasi]

phpbb3 just came out less than 3 or 4 years ago 0.o, its not that old
and vbulletin is older than that lol

phpbb also has one of the bigger modding communities, and id venture to bet, is the easier one to modify

 

[GeekDrew]

I guess I'll rephrase, then. phpBB, in my opinion, would cause me to think significantly less about a company than if they used vBulletin, Fusetalk, or nearly anything else. Perhaps it's the undying hatred I have of phpBB because of the endless supply of poorly designed forums, nearly all of which looked like they were designed in 15 minutes, using Notepad, and without being checked to see if it would actually display correctly.

 

[wwswimming]

Originally posted by: GeekDrew
I guess I'll rephrase, then. phpBB, in my opinion, would cause me to think significantly less about a company than if they used vBulletin, Fusetalk, or nearly anything else. Perhaps it's the undying hatred I have of phpBB because of the endless supply of poorly designed forums, nearly all of which looked like they were designed in 15 minutes, using Notepad, and without being checked to see if it would actually display correctly.

perhaps Dreamhost gets some of the credit for that.

they have brought "phpBB to the masses."

 

[aequasi]

yeah, i have seen some quality phpbb forums, and they are, once again pretty easy to customize if you really care to do it. its all in your hands

 

[wwswimming]

anyway, thanks for all the replies. now i can Bet with Confidence ® .

 

[Fayd]

Originally posted by: wwswimming

my brother is a VP of marketing or something for a Skype-type start-up.

he just made a comment that phpBB is an early-90's technology. he tends to advocate using Twitter & Facebook for customer support.

just out of curiosity - what companies use Forum software (e.g. phpBB/mySQL, Fusetalk, VBulletin, First Class, etc.) for customer support purposes ?

i know Asus has customer support forums. (side-note - i hear that their customer service sucks.)

what other companies use this category of software ?

he said i should look at Twitter, so i did. it says there's a 140 character limit on "tweets". is that right ? i would think you would need longer messages to communicate on customer support issues. i was thinking their was a soft-mod that allows companies to use Twitter for cust. support, but with longer messages.

MSI hosts a public forum, but doesnt do customer support directly on it.

most every company i've seen uses support tickets.

 

[bruceb]

Most companies seem to like vBulletin for their forums. Including Avira, DVDFab, ClubCDFreaks and many others, all seem to be on this vBulletin. In fact, so far, I have only run across Fusetalk here.