<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Michael at WebFlyer:
As for alternative BB systems...I have been looking into them for sometime now. I've even setup and tested many on our local server. The list includes "WWWThreads", "vBulletin", "WebCrossing", and a number of other less reputable boards. "Jive" came to my attention through a personal email from an individual who I found very warm and knowledgeable. I've taken a cursory look at the software and have liked what I have seen so far but it'll need to be scoped out a little better. I will be doing a thourough investigation of it's relative strengths and weaknesses here very, very shortly.
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Sounds like a plan. WebCrossing will scale better, but with over 50 WebX installations in place and working we're likely to move away from them, also a flat file system and subject to some strange things happening from time to time, but definately a nice step up.
Jive certainly seems to be the flavour of the moment because it is Open Source and thus very customizeable. The side issue is that it takes a little more engineering resources to implement it... or you can pay the folks who wrote Jive a few bucks and they'll make it work, they're good guys and relatively inepxensive to hire.
Whatever the alternative be aware that moving the data cna be a challenge in some systems, look further ahead and consider both moving the data into a new system, and later out of it... some systems don't do exports gracefully if at all. Jive is nice, it uses Oracle for it's DB... neither flat file nor a problem moving data in or out.