Good topic.

VBulletin is not just "special" in one way. There are numerous examples about the "Firm" as a whole that make them quite unique.

Firstly, their release of Open "Visual" Source licensing scheme. Ever wonder why there are hundreds if not thousands of active participants creating hacks for every version released? Including Beta's?

Secondly, their lead developer, "Kier" leaves no room for error. Not only this, his coding is very consistant and functions and/or classes within the scripts are used the way PHP intended for them to be used.

Thirdly, VBulletin uses what's called "Template Conditions" available within their template system. This allows any designer to dig into the templates for complete maximum control based on any code that was parsed before the call to the template system. The beauty about this is you don't even need to touch the PHP code to handle template logic. Very unique indeed. Others have begun to follow suit.

There are other major advantages for the software and company as a whole. For instance, the way they handle their support, as well as the fact they have an active bug tracker to existing members to post reports based on issues within the software. Each month or whenever they feel it's time to release the next version, all patches are fixed from the valid bug reports within the bug tracker. Their upgrade scripts work without issue! Unlike other softwares available on the market. It's very hard to compare, but IPB seems to be pretty solid as well (in terms of forum softwares).

Lastly, one of the biggest improvements to the VBulletin software would be it's newest trend/feature called Hooks. They have prepared at least 400 unique locations within their software to allow any developer to make use of these special locations to completely customize the software to do what you want, whenever you want. (example: send new posts from a particular forum to a seperate email address if required).

Either way, many people may try to compare VBulletin with other softwares but if you simply look at the statistics, you don't see Yahoo going to IPB or any other company to handle their online forums. They have chosen VBulletin. It's only logicial, you don't see big boys with big sites running IPB or PHPBB. Maybe you do or know of any, but facts are facts - the statistics don't lie.

I wonder what choice you'll be making in the end. For what it's worth, pay the $160 and learn the system. You and your member base will thank them later.

Off-topic for a moment, I also wonder why Talkfreelance has chosen VBulletin. Theres just no comparsion to any other forum software (yet). Why? I'll tell you - it's because those to attempt to create forum software tend to fall back on "What does VB have"? in the end VB will always have more features than the rest, and if they wanted to call it game over, they would by integrating their "Hack" sites with hundreds of addons into commerical software with at least 1000+ active developers helping the firm grow into something monsterous.

With Yahoo on the go with VBulletin, I think this will pressure them a little more into refining their options as a company. Refine what? I'm not sure, we'll all just have to wait and see. I've heard some talk about Draggable AJAX options for their content/layout and for what it's worth, blogs are a huge trend/way of life for some people at the moment. This is something they'll need to break into as IPB as already (started or completed?) their blogs addon. (I think)...

Regards,
Peter