Reply #4: I am also a developer... [View All]

[dutchdemocrat]

And DU may be 'oh so nineties' but it's fast, clean and serves it's purpose well.

My own experience with a large community demanding bells and whistles was a huge increase in php requests, huge increase in bandwidth, and a slower, bulkier site - which eventually hurt the community more than it helped it.

And I have tuned and optimized to the max using Zend, tightening code etc.

These guys are doing the right thing - at the right pace. Maybe they are not using the best or most popular forum software but that's also a good thing in some ways as it's a lot less hackable than say... phpbb, SMF, or VB - which suffer from kiddie scripters so much you have to update constantly in order to keep your security levels up.

The balance between community tools, forum layout and ease of use, speed, and design is interconnected and DU is on the right path as far as I am concerned.