Interview - Matt Mecham of Ibforums

The Present - Ibforums

With whom did you start Ibforums? What support did you get from the outside community to start afresh?

Charles Warner and I left JEG to start our own partnership. We set up Invision Power Services as soon as we could -- this is the parent company for all our services. The support we had from the community was simply amazing. I had hoped that a few members would follow us over to Invision Board, but I never expected about 85% of the regular posters to follow us. It was at that moment that the true community feel unified us and made us all feel part of an extended family. We set up a temporary board to hold discussions and within a few days we had nearly a thousand members registered and actively posting.

For me, the community is just as important as the product -- especially in the business we're in. If we're marketing a community building product, then it makes sense that we have a strong active community of our own -- Ikonboard and Invision Board have always been lucky enough to gain a diverse following. The current Invision Board team is as diverse as it is as talented. Ken (Heartcall), one of the founding members of the original "iTeam" is a performing musician, and Luke our support co-ordinator is also a talented musician, recently performing live in front of 20,000 people in a performance that included Michael Jackson.

Andre and Oscar (Nominell) are two of the most original graphic artists I've seen in a long time, Stewart Cambpell is doing wonderful work converting our clients from other forum software to Invision Board -- often juggling 20 conversions at a time. And the self titled "MadDocktor" is our security expert -- often plugging holes in Windows software and giving us all advice on how to protect our systems. The list goes on and on! We're very lucky to have one of the best teams in the business. Our dedicated support team (consisting of 20 members) works its socks off to provide first class service with our free and priority support requests -- 98% of all tickets and posts asking for support are answered within a few hours, if not sooner. As we have such a large team spanning the globe, it's not practical to have a centralized office for us all to work in. The Internet is a communications medium and we use it to keep in contact, regularly holding meetings on our private IRC channel. All of the team members are in constant contact via the support board and instant messaging software.

You preferred to write Ibforums in PHP, as opposed to your previous choice of writing Ikonboard in Perl. Are there any reasons of that? Did you consider PHP to be more superior to Perl?

When I started getting into Web programming, back in late 1999, Perl was the language most commonly used -- it was actively developed and installed on nearly all Web servers. Through writing modifications for other bulletin boards, I became quite comfortable with Perl, so when I started Ikonboard it was natural to continue using Perl. I should note that nearly all the major bulletin boards were using Perl at the time. UBB, wwwthreads (now UBB.Threads), etc. were all coded in Perl, as PHP had yet to prove itself, and in its version 3 incarnations, it was clumsy and missing a few of the power features that made Perl easier to use.

During the development of Ikonboard 3, PHP was gaining ground rapidly. The new bulletin boards, such as vBulletin were coded in PHP and attracted a lot of interest, as PHP was quicker and less server-intensive (when compiled into Apache, as most PHP installations are). Perl was starting to look a little outdated and I realized that if Ikonboard were still to compete, it must make the transition to PHP. I read the signs pretty early -- Perl was getting bad press and development had seemed to stagnate, mod_perl was such a pain to set up and code for that it wasn't much of an option for the average Webmaster, and despite Ikonboard 3's complete compatibility with mod_perl, it wasn't often run under mod_perl. PHP was definitely the future.

In early 2002, after Ikonboard 3 was released, I ordered a few PHP books and set about learning the language. PHP is like Perl in so many ways, it didn't take long to pick up, and I made a start on the totally new Ikonboard PHP (code-named Aurora). Unfortunately, Ikonboard PHP never saw the light of day under my reign at Ikonboard. When I left the project I returned all the Aurora files and development notes.

So PHP seemed like the natural choice when I started developing Invision Board. Its forgiving nature and quick code development allowed me to build the basic structure of Invision Board within a few short months. I didn't have to worry about mod_perl, fast_cgi or any of that nonsense, I could just code PHP and not worry (too much!) about cross platform issues -- it was like a breath of fresh air. My early PHP code was approached from a "Perlish" angle, so much so that I dubbed my style "PHPERL". After working with PHP for about 5 months I feel that I am as comfortable with it as I was with Perl after 12 months.

Did you face any legal problems because of your contract with JEG, when you started Ibforums? Did you use the same routine codes, converted to PHP of course, to start Ibforums?

The contract JEG and I signed was very loose. There was no non-compete clause and no claim on any future work developed by me. JEG only acquired Ikonboard and all rights to it; they did not and could not acquire me or my coding style. If you'll excuse the analogy, if you purchase a Van Gogh painting and employ Van Gogh to paint a few more for you and he then leaves, you would not have any legal grounds to force him to change his style just because he worked for you and you bought one of his paintings.

I have my own way of working and my own coding style and this was naturally carried onto Invision Board. The Invision Board development was quick because it was my third bulletin board script that I'd authored within an 18 month period (Ikonboard 1/2 and Ikonboard 3 were totally different). Without a doubt, some of the Ikonboard structure and methods are in Invision Board, but that's because it's my style and the way I code. Invision Board has been out for many months and I know that JEG has examined the Invision Board code for copyright infringements. As I've heard nothing from them, one can assume that JEG has no issue with Invision Board.