I'm sure there are very good reasons for how things are the way they are but I'd like to understand them. So if there is an old thread that is pertinent please post the link.

I came across some old threads that discussed vBulletin and a couple other forum software vendors but haven't seen anything recently. Is there a chance of moving to vBulletin soon? I can see a LOT of benefits for doing so. What are the reasons for not doing this? How many people are involved behing the scenes allowing FlyerTalk breathe day in day out? Is any help needed?

We've looked at vBulletin and there is no conclusive evidence that it will serve FlyerTalk any better than UBB. What you don't see up front are the technical challenges and financial commitment of anyone hosting any Web site our size. There's really only a handful of us and those with vBulletin are having their hands full to keep it going as well as throwing a lot of money behind these things. One of the large gaming Web sites uses vBulletin and they told us they are spending roughly $200,000 a year to keep it stable with their traffic (they were about 15% more traffic than us). We actually made some great progress the last week in keeping FlyerTalk stable. The latest probelm in case you hadn't read other posts was not caused by UBB or our software or our commitment behind it - it was a few members trying to hack different things into the bulletin board. It doesn't really matter which solution you use - if members don't respect it and get carried away with pranks - it will likely take down anything we could use.

Having said all this - we are still testing and looking at other solutions.