Anyone with a VERY large community using Burning Board?

  • Our community has used WBB board since 2001. averaging 1000 users online (without guests). Board has always run smoothly
    Knowledge is useless without action. and you only missed 13 year of action ;)


    I am new to WBB, but far from new to forums. I've seen more than enough 'action' in that regard.

    You seem to be on the defensive regarding my inquiry, when you have no cause to be. I do like what I see from WBB and it has become one of my favorite forum developments. But I do have a few sites that require "precision planning".

  • no offense, but XenForo is the last board to be comapred to WBB.. released in 2011,advertising all over....
    request WBB demo and try it


    I do not believe in my reply I mentioned XenForo. And online demos hosted on the developer's site is not something that will demonstrate the full ease of use, customization, and resources (not even xenforo's demo is good for that, nor is any developer's demo).

    Thanks for your opinion, but I'll continue to wait and see if any larger sites adapt.

    I do like Burning Board 4 though. I may use it for another project in the future. But my inquire still stands, as I do have larger needs else where.


  • I do not believe in my reply I mentioned XenForo. And online demos hosted on the developer's site is not something that will demonstrate the full ease of use, customization, and resources (not even xenforo's demo is good for that, nor is any developer's demo).

    Thanks for your opinion, but I'll continue to wait and see if any larger sites adapt.

    I do like Burning Board 4 though. I may use it for another project in the future. But my inquire still stands, as I do have larger needs else where.

    A few days before we had HUGE traffic due to attack from Russia+China landing on WBB4 multiple pages.

    • 5,671 Users Online
    • The Outgoing traffic reached more than 3GB in 20 minutes.
    • The CPU traffic topped up to 65%
    • The RAM usage up to 45 % (64GB Ram)


    The side affect on real users was nothing !!!
    Full Page loading gone from 2,5 Secs to 3,1 without cache and nothing more.
    If you see our page, is full of plugins and graphics.

    Front Page => https://xiaomi-miui.gr/community/
    Forum list page => https://xiaomi-miui.gr/community/index.php/BoardList/

    But we are running on Nginx + PHP-FPM + Memcached.
    Wbb4 until now is running fine, but this is one factor for smooth browsing.
    The other factor and most important is Server configuration and hardware specs.

    I believe WBB4 will overpass your needs for huge traffic and Huge database, but focus also on server configuration part.

  • Just numbers. At least for vBulletin. The timeframe that the system counts a member as online is setable. In simple words. Set it to 10000 and you'll see online someone who last visited your site a week ago.
    Admincp-> Settings-> Options-> Who's Online Options

    If you count to choose a forum script based on such numbers, sorry but you'll be disapppointed at the end.

    2 Mal editiert, zuletzt von ChrisTERiS (20. Juli 2014 um 19:57)

  • Just numbers. At least for vBulletin. The timeframe that the system counts a member as online is setable. In simple words. Set it to 10000 and you'll see online someone who last visited your site a week ago.
    Admincp-> Settings-> Options-> Who's Online Options

    If you count to choose a forum script based on such numbers, sorry but you'll be disapppointed at the end.


    Not looking for inflated vBulletin numbers, but real-time numbers. ;)


  • I listed those examples only to give people an understanding of what I mean when I says, 'big and active".

    One of those is vBulletin 3
    One of those is phpBB
    One of those is XenForo

    The one using XenForo works just fine and we'll be sticking with them. However I am seeking a possible alternative for my more larger communities. Performance on XenForo is good, but features is lacking (when your site gets X big, you do not want add-ons).

    If these forum software can do it, wBB4 can do it too easily !

  • If these forum software can do it, wBB4 can do it too easily !


    We'll soon find out.... A lot has changed since I originally made the post and so a couple of very large sites will likely be switching to Woltlab Burning Board upon the release of 4.1


  • Not looking for inflated vBulletin numbers, but real-time numbers. ;)

    You can't really call them inflated. Let's face the true. If I remember well you talked for a community with 1.000.000+ members. It's out of any logic to query the database every 1 min (default setting is: 60sec) just for counting the online users. You'll spend valueable resources without special reason. The normal is to run such query every 15 minutes.

    Also there is another setting for how many minutes of inactivity a user counts as online. Last but not least. There are plenty plugins giving fake online member list. And be sure that in most cases you'll never see them in the plugin list. A simple change to the cronjob xml can shows even incredible statistics (eg Members 1.000, Online Members 1.500 :)

  • You can't really call them inflated. Let's face the true. If I remember well you talked for a community with 1.000.000+ members. It's out of any logic to query the database every 1 min (default setting is: 60sec) just for counting the online users. You'll spend valueable resources without special reason. The normal is to run such query every 15 minutes.

    Also there is another setting for how many minutes of inactivity a user counts as online. Last but not least. There are plenty plugins giving fake online member list. And be sure that in most cases you'll never see them in the plugin list. A simple change to the cronjob xml can shows even incredible statistics (eg Members 1.000, Online Members 1.500 :)

    The community in question has the setting set for once ever 120 second (2 minutes) and has no plugins installed.


  • Same values

    Working since Oct 2005 as vBulletin Freelancer with at least 4 big boards and many other smaller, what I can say for sure is that the most common request from my clients was: "Is there anyway to tease statistics without this teaser to be visible in admincp?". The reason was simple. They wanted to sell their sites (mostly gaming sites) and thus they wanted to show "big numbers" to potential buyers. That's why I said you before: "Don't trust number". So here is an easy way to tease the numbers without to changing anything in settings.

    • Let's say that the Session Timeout is the default (900 sec = 15 min).
    • This value is the setting $vbulletin->options['cookietimeout']
    • In file forum.php line 462 exists the code: $datecut = TIMENOW - $vbulletin->options['cookietimeout'];
    • This code means: Store in variable $datecut the current time - 15 min (the default value).
    • A simple change to: $datecut = TIMENOW - ($vbulletin->options['cookietimeout'] * 4); changes the session time out to 1 hour (900 * 4). Have you checked the source code of the forum.php?? Note that the visual setting in admincp still says: 900 sec
    • And because some potential clients can check this file, is so easy in one of 100's vB core files to add a hook location "after_load_variables": $vbulletin->options['cookietimeout'] = ($vbulletin->options['cookietimeout'] * 4);

    Hope that you understood now how easy is to tease statistics not only a coder but also a designer. And be sure that big boards have their own dedicated coder as I'm for 3 companies around the world now.

    The end point. I'm not talking against vBulletin. I'm talking against the trust of statistics. I'm licensed owner of vBulletin, xenForo, IPB and WBB. Actually, even if I bought WBB at August 2011, 3 years now I haven't used it anywhere.

  • Working since Oct 2005 as vBulletin Freelancer with at least 4 big boards and many other smaller, what I can say for sure is that the most common request from my clients was: "Is there anyway to tease statistics without this teaser to be visible in admincp?". The reason was simple. They wanted to sell their sites (mostly gaming sites) and thus they wanted to show "big numbers" to potential buyers. That's why I said you before: "Don't trust number". So here is an easy way to tease the numbers without to changing anything in settings.

    • Let's say that the Session Timeout is the default (900 sec = 15 min).
    • This value is the setting $vbulletin->options['cookietimeout']
    • In file forum.php line 462 exists the code: $datecut = TIMENOW - $vbulletin->options['cookietimeout'];
    • This code means: Store in variable $datecut the current time - 15 min (the default value).
    • A simple change to: $datecut = TIMENOW - ($vbulletin->options['cookietimeout'] * 4); changes the session time out to 1 hour (900 * 4). Have you checked the source code of the forum.php?? Note that the visual setting in admincp still says: 900 sec
    • And because some potential clients can check this file, is so easy in one of 100's vB core files to add a hook location "after_load_variables": $vbulletin->options['cookietimeout'] = ($vbulletin->options['cookietimeout'] * 4);

    Hope that you understood now how easy is to tease statistics not only a coder but also a designer. And be sure that big boards have their own dedicated coder as I'm for 3 companies around the world now.

    The end point. I'm not talking against vBulletin. I'm talking against the trust of statistics. I'm licensed owner of vBulletin, xenForo, IPB and WBB. Actually, even if I bought WBB at August 2011, 3 years now I haven't used it anywhere.

    You really should stop thinking the numbers are incorrect, given that I am the super admin of the site in question ;)

    (Don't know what the point you're trying to make here, really)

  • You really should stop thinking the numbers are incorrect, given that I am the super admin of the site in question

    Nothing more than I got wrong your question. I thought that you're interesting to buy a site. That's all. As I said I don't have a partnership with any of the forum software. I've bought all paid and actually I use none of them. But I like to test them. Exactly as I'm doing with WBB4 right now. Do you think that I know even to use it? No. Much more to advice someone in a so important topic like yours. The only that I can say is that for sure is stable software.

    I believe that with all 4 software (vB, IPB, xF, WBB) you can work fine with really big communities. Everything depends on your server and it's configuration. You know very well that even the best software with numbers like yours will crash in a ...sharing hosting :)

  • Nothing more than I got wrong your question. I thought that you're interesting to buy a site. That's all. As I said I don't have a partnership with any of the forum software. I've bought all paid and actually I use none of them. But I like to test them. Exactly as I'm doing with WBB4 right now. Do you think that I know even to use it? No. Much more to advice someone in a so important topic like yours. The only that I can say is that for sure is stable software.

    I believe that with all 4 software (vB, IPB, xF, WBB) you can work fine with really big communities. Everything depends on your server and it's configuration. You know very well that even the best software with numbers like yours will crash in a ...sharing hosting :)

    The site in question leases its own space in datacenter using our own servers, so yes, I know very well that shared hosting is beyond out of scope. :P

    I would disagree with your comment that all developments would be idea for a large site. IP.Board for example uses a lot more resources, as does for example, vBulletin 5 which currently uses more than any development out there.

    We plan on switching to WBB upon it's 4.1 release. And since the start of this thread, someone has showed me a private community which has the idea user base we were looking for comparing (although theirs is larger) and they seem to be running WWB 4.0 just fine. 4.1 fits our needs better though and so if possible, we'll wait.

  • I would disagree with your comment that all developments would be idea for a large site.

    ....hehehe..... Just found a nice way to quote. Just marked a part of the sentence and it appeared a "Quote text" tooltip. Clicked it and here I'm :) ... No more full quote and then erasing text.

    If it helps you, I'm in a VPS. Nothing special, but works fine. If you like I can install all 4 forums there and try on your own which one is better.

  • ....hehehe..... Just found a nice way to quote. Just marked a part of the sentence and it appeared a "Quote text" tooltip. Clicked it and here I'm :) ... No more full quote and then erasing text.

    If it helps you, I'm in a VPS. Nothing special, but works fine. If you like I can install all 4 forums there and try on your own which one is better.

    Thanks for the offer. We've already done this ourselves. WBB 4.1 appears to be the future for us. :)

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