The strange thing that caught my attention is that PunBB is a very simple PHP-powered bulletin board. Why such a big company like Facebook didn't make their own forum CMS or use a commercial one such as vBulletin, or the free and famous one phpBB, or bbPress. Why PunBB?

I went ahead to PunBB and register for an account for their forum. I tested it and here are some findings.

PunBB features

PunBB claims to have the following features:

• is fast.
• has simple layout and design.
• is easy to administrate and moderate.
• doesn't output huge, non-valid, (X)HTML pages.
• has source code you could read and understand.

What I like about PunBB

1. The forum seem to be pretty simple and fast as they claimed it to be.
2. It's light weight.
3. Active support community.
4. Used by famous companies like Facebook.
5. (due to unexpected reason, this part is missing).

What I don't like

There are something I don't like though.

1. The system redirect the URL for almost every action related to the database. That's something very strange, and ofcourse it slightly increase the lag and wait time between operations.
2. The PunBB forum, just like other forums and unlike bbPress, doesn't have friendly URL. At this time I still don't know if there are plugins that provide friendly URL feature for this. If not, this will be a major drawback for the system and might be the cause for me not using it.

What's next?

I'm considering this to be the solution for my own help forum in replacement for the help page. I hate complexity in the interface and back-end system. Something like Joomla just isn't right for me.

If you are interseted in this system, please go ahead and visit their website PunBB and test out their PunBB Forums. And of course, you should check out how face book use it on their Facebook Platform Developers Forum. And (another and) don't forget to come back here and tell me how you feel.

This is a temporary decision. I'm still choosing between WordPress and Drupal. I have been collecting information on the various most popular Content Management System (CMS) like Joomla, Mambo, Drupal, XOOPS, WordPress and a few more.

Why I chose WordPress?

WordPress may have more limitation than a fully tweaked Drupal site, but for timing reason I have to use it.

The best thing about WordPress that is better than Drupal is that simply work out of the box. I just needed to download a few nice themes and few useful plug-ins and here it goes, running like a pro.

The next best thing about WordPress is that, not because it have so many plug-ins and themes, but the themes are extremely nicer and those expand are easier to find. I especially like the easy-to-view theme snapshots.

I will discuss more about the different CMS choices in another time.

Why not wait for a more stable solution

Basically, I have spent too long as I can recall. It's been about 2 months since I started looking into the first CMS, which was php-Nuke (the thing that tell me what a CMS is like).

Since then, I have been writing my blogs off line in OneNote and keep the files on my computers. I always are waiting to publish those near to a thousand pages I have written. Those written pages are ranging from my life issues to making money and a lot of ideas on self development. I kept on writing while learning the things that I haven't studied at university.

The call to start

The final moment when I started "Oh well! Let's do it instead of day-dreaming about it. Make it live an change it later". I made the decision because I read the Writing Tips on WordPress 's Writing Posts guide. The article suggest that people should 'worry about blog design later':

Blog design matters, but only to an extent. Don’t give up on blogging just because the design isn’t coming up as you’ll like it it to be. Sooner or later, you’ll get around the design problems with ease. But continue writing. Content is what attracts your readers, not just the look of your blog.

(Source http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_Posts)

But still, I'm seriously considering the Drupal as the final solution. I have seen many high-profile Durpal Powered Sites and I really like it. A few things that don't satisfy me are:

• URL alias management,
• Multiple subdomains / domains duplicated content issue,
• URL redirect to alias,
• Lack of nice themes and theme snapshots.

Since it's a long topic, I will create a post discussing about Drupal later on.

Do you like WordPress? Should I keep it permanently or should I change?