# Can we build better forum software? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [March 14, 2012, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723 "2012-03-14T06:22:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/142 "2013-02-10T02:18:00Z")
[Best website, EVAR!](http://attrition.org/) Minimalist design, most basic browser will see it’s content. Content is king. Pretty graphics are _not_ part of that content. _That_ is what you should be aiming for. Their color scheme could use some work, but you won’t _see_ that with a basic browser. All you’ll see is the content. If your content sucks, Avatars, Likes, Animated GIFs, Facebook crap, and Twitter tweets _won’t_ improve it. ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/143 "2013-02-10T09:02:11Z")
The mistake you make is assuming that delivering something via the web is a promise to deliver it to **all** web clients. Many web sites are merely applications, and a subset of browsers just happen to be the convenient platform for the developer to deliver them on. You can write a windows application and use very specific APIs to do something incredibly mundane, and then one day you realize that it would be a lot less work if you used HTTP and Internet Explorer to deliver the exact same functionality to the exact same audience with a lot less effort, but what you’ll end up with is a certain segment of individuals who will see that choice and say “WHY DON’T YOU SUPPORT OPERA.” The answer, of course, is “because screw you, the alternative to building a web app that only supports certain browsers it to **not make it a web app** and make it support an even smaller number of users.” To some people, the web is a tool to accomplish a task, and to some, it’s some kind of ideologically pure concept where if you are on _the web_ you must support **all** of the web users. It basically takes the ability to build nice, rich, web-based things and converts it from an asset into a liability due to the fact that you are expected to support the lowest common denominator while still trying to do advanced things that are only available to some clients. I’m thankful that the number of people who think like this is rapidly dwindling, and I’m also thankful that I don’t need to support IE6 anymore. ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/144 "2013-02-10T18:22:30Z")
> [@Cheshire\_Human](#): > > Somewhere in v10 or v12 should do it. I ain’t going for the newest. I’ll let you ‘early adopters’ trip over the bugs. Enjoy 'em, and have fun. Knock yourself out dealing with those bugs. Me? I wait for you to squish them for me. _Then_ I adopt. After you’ve killed the bugs. Stomp away! Uhhh … do you realize that those updates are often bug and security fixes, which make the newer versions of browsers faster and more stable than previous versions? The Firefox 3.\* series had a bad reputation for memory leaks, which was patched through the years, but finally fixed in Firefox 15. The various security holes of Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, and the stubborn resistance of many of its fans to upgrade it, [remains a thorn in the side of Microsoft, IT security professionals, and Web designers](http://www.ie6countdown.com/). Nobody’s fixing the bugs in your old browser. Those newer versions _are_ the fixes, the “kinks being worked out”. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/145 "2013-02-10T19:16:39Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **spinky** : > > I’m thankful that the number of people who think like this is rapidly dwindling, and I’m also thankful that I don’t need to support IE6 anymore. With a well-designed web page, you don’t _need_ to actively support IE6 or Mozilla or Netscape Navigator or whatever. You just need to support HTML, and if you do that, then all browsers will automatically work with it. Now, again, there might be some fancy things you want to do that require advanced features not available on all browsers. And if those fancy things are themselves your content, fine, go ahead and require those advanced features. But for basic purposes like displaying plain text, it’s easy to support everything. You have to actively go out of your way, making more work for yourself, to make it _not_ support everything. ---
**Author:** ![Giraffe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giraffe/32/129_2.png) [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/146 "2013-02-10T19:54:09Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > With a well-designed web page, you don’t _need_ to actively support IE6 or Mozilla or Netscape Navigator or whatever. You just need to support HTML, and if you do that, then all browsers will automatically work with it. > > Now, again, there might be some fancy things you want to do that require advanced features not available on all browsers. And if those fancy things are themselves your content, fine, go ahead and require those advanced features. But for basic purposes like displaying plain text, it’s easy to support everything. You have to actively go out of your way, making more work for yourself, to make it _not_ support everything. I don’t think you fully appreciate what goes into modern web design. Yes, web pages of plain text, formatted with \ and \ and maybe the occasional \ to spice things up will work on all browser versions and is technically sufficient to convey text-based information. So, strictly speaking, it could be argued any page that departs from that is adding extra bells and whistles that restrict backward compatibility. However, that type of page bears as much resemblance to a modern site as a teepee does to a skyscraper. One can walk around New York City and decry all the pointlessly overcomplicated structures, but that doesn’t seem like it would be very useful. The vast majority of web content producers and consumers value aesthetics and functionality over backward compatibility, so the language standards are going to evolve. One can dig in one’s heels on general principle, but you’re going to be the caveman wearing a bear pelt at a cocktail party. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/147 "2013-02-10T20:43:15Z")
The dude with the tall throat tells the truth. The new _should_ accommodate the old, but only until it becomes an obstacle. A group of people ran science fiction conventions in my area and they had a website up that, to accommodate some older members, actually had to be compatible with whatever Commodore software the techno-fogies were using at the time, and this went on _far_ longer than it should have. Try to imagine how threadbare a website has to be for that kind of backwards compatibility to work. ---
**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2013, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/148 "2013-02-11T00:15:09Z")
I went there to try it out. I could read it, but it wouldn’t let me post without registering. Not going to register just to try it out. Based on what I could see, though, my main impression is ugly, ugly, ugly. ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2013, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/149 "2013-02-11T04:09:26Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > With a well-designed web page, you don’t _need_ to actively support IE6 or Mozilla or Netscape Navigator or whatever. You just need to support HTML, and if you do that, then all browsers will automatically work with it. Hilarious. There are whole aisles of books in your nerdier bookstores dedicated to the science, no, scratch that, the art, no scratch that, the **voodoo** of cross-browser compatibility. Yes, even for stuff that adheres to standards. There are highly paid developers whose **entire reason for being valuable** is that they know all the tricks. Most web developers don’t actually try to know all the arcane differences and just use compatibility layers like jquery to abstract away the ball-of-shit that is browser “standards” adherence (and stuff that differs simply because of the standards often not being specific enough). And IE6 is widely regarded as the most difficult to support in recent history. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2013, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/150 "2013-02-11T16:41:37Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > With a well-designed web page, you don’t _need_ to actively support IE6 or Mozilla or Netscape Navigator or whatever. You just need to support HTML, and if you do that, then all browsers will automatically work with it. Incorrect: many browsers are not standards-compliant to the current HTML standards ([Acid2 - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2)) Also, I have yet to see a version of Lynx that supports HTML5. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2013, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/151 "2013-02-11T16:44:24Z")
> [@Cheshire\_Human](#): > > [Best website, EVAR!](http://attrition.org/) Minimalist design, most basic browser will see it’s content. Content is king. Pretty graphics are _not_ part of that content. > > _That_ is what you should be aiming for. Their color scheme could use some work, but you won’t _see_ that with a basic browser. All you’ll see is the content. If your content sucks, Avatars, Likes, Animated GIFs, Facebook crap, and Twitter tweets _won’t_ improve it. On the off chance you’re serious, that website has terrible content and organization–rightly so, since it’s expressly the idiosyncratic expression of a bunch of neckbeards, but hardly anything to hold up as a shining beacon on a hill. ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2013, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/152 "2013-02-11T18:51:02Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > On the off chance you’re serious, that website has terrible content and organization–rightly so, since it’s expressly the idiosyncratic expression of a bunch of neckbeards, but hardly anything to hold up as a shining beacon on a hill. I wasn’t pointing to the content or organization, I was pointing to their use of minimalist HTML to _display_ their content. No excess graphics, no backgrounds, just a plain background, plain text, and nothing that does not actually qualify as content. No unnecessary HTML, at that. If it doesn’t _have_ to be there for the display of the content, it isn’t there. BTW, though, I _like_ their content. But I’m an idiosyncratic neckbeard, myself. :p:p:p ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2013, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/153 "2013-02-11T21:19:50Z")
> [@Cheshire\_Human](#): > > I wasn’t pointing to the content or organization, I was pointing to their use of minimalist HTML to _display_ their content. No excess graphics, no backgrounds, just a plain background, plain text, and nothing that does not actually qualify as content. No unnecessary HTML, at that. If it doesn’t _have_ to be there for the display of the content, it isn’t there. I thought you were joking about that page. Using"excess" and “unnecessary” html to provide organization, context and functionality is extremely important and valuable to the consumers of the information. Maybe you can give examples of which html is “excess” and which is not? ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2013, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/154 "2013-02-11T22:19:40Z")
> [@Cheshire\_Human](#): > > No excess graphics, no backgrounds, just a plain background, plain text, and nothing that does not actually qualify as content. But you are wrong - they have a stupid quote and an angry squirrel icon at the top. ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2013, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/155 "2013-02-11T23:56:17Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > I thought you were joking about that page. > > Using"excess" and “unnecessary” html to provide organization, context and functionality is extremely important and valuable to the consumers of the information. > > Maybe you can give examples of which html is “excess” and which is not? If LYNX doesn’t do it as plain text, it’s excessive. Yes, I’m a Luddite. The Apple IIe was the highest form of “computer”. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2013, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/156 "2013-02-12T01:38:00Z")
> [@codinghorror](#): > > OK, but the shag carpet hopefully isn’t preventing you from taking a look at the underlying house itself, I hope 🙂 Actually, it is. I share the opinion expressed by others that the demo is fugly. I don’t go into bars that look shady, or restaurants that look dirty. Aesthetics is an important part of the site experience. Fugly turns me off. I have better things to do with my time. ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2013, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/157 "2013-02-12T16:14:36Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Actually, it is. I share the opinion expressed by others that the demo is fugly. I don’t go into bars that look shady, or restaurants that look dirty. Aesthetics is an important part of the site experience. Fugly turns me off. I have better things to do with my time. Yeah, this. Using a ‘fugly’ example may turn people off before they look at the underlying house. Use a clean layout, then tell people about all the shag carpet and marble countertops they can get as options. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2013, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/158 "2013-02-12T17:15:19Z")
Maybe he needs someone who can do layout and style and stuff, so he can manage the structure and tools and such. ---
**Author:** ![R3d\_Anonymous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/aeb1de/32.png) [@R3d\_Anonymous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/R3d_Anonymous)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/159 "2013-03-23T03:12:30Z")
Sorry for the bump, but I don’t feel like starting a new thread for this question. But how often is the vBulletin software updated here? This board is still on 3.7.3, [but they have came out with 5 Connect.](http://www.vbulletin.com/) ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/160 "2013-03-23T03:32:54Z")
I would say the last change would have been around 2007; 2008 if they evaluated it first. Thing is: New Is Not Always Better; upgrading can break things bad; a lot of customization can be lost in an upgrade; and it costs for new licensing — vBull used to have licences for life if you paid for it; now it’s strictly annual. There’s no reason for them to waste money. Plus as a bon-bouche the newer vBulletins are fugly. ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/161 "2013-06-29T08:55:23Z")
I gave a talk about this, and Straight Dope is covered extensively. Some of the posts here are even highlighted in my talk! > **[Forums Are Dead, Long Live Forums](https://blog.discourse.org/2013/06/forums-are-dead-long-live-forums/)** > > Here’s my ForumCon 2013 keynote, Forums Are Dead, Long Live Forums – you’ll have to juxtapose the video with the slides manually, unfortunately, but here they are side by side. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723.md?page=9)