What Is The Best Forum Software

What is the best Forum Software?

  • vBulletin (not free!) ([url]www.vbulletin.com[/url])

  • phpBB (free) ([url]www.phpBB.com[/url])

  • ikonboard (free!) ([url]www.ikonboard.com[/url])

  • other

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GadgetLover

GadgetLover

Senior Member & Tech Guru
What is the best forum software and WHY do you think so?

Please, before you answer, make sure that you have looked at websites/forums created with each of the above-references forum software tools.

vBulletin is great, but it is NOT free.
phpBB seems to have nearly all of vBulletin's features abd is FREE! (But how does it look to you? Why not try visiting a few forums which use this software).

And ikonboard looks nice too.

And then there's YapBB ( http://yapbb.sourceforge.net/ )

So many to chose from ...

P.S. I may be willing to pay someone to build out this portion of a database-driven website. Since it is so easy to do, it won't be top dollar, but I am pay a few hundies to someone that wants to create a nice integrated theme (including menus and graphics).
 
Ok, so I'll admit that I'm biased. I am a programmer for phpBB, just so everyone knows. ;)

I really think phpBB is great because of the templates along with a nice set of features. I can already say that the feature set for 2.2 will be even nicer. The community is great, it's fun to work with, I just like it... How does it look? It looks however you would like it too. :p The code is clean, and it's secure. It definately can be powerful when it needs to. (I've seen it run on large sites without problems.)

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me, post on our forums or stop by on IRC sometime.
 
I really think phpBB is nice. I seem to be able to skin it easier then I have other bullettin boards. And hey, its free, you can't beat that :)

Have a great day!

Albert
 
I had the fortune to run many forum programs in the past and I'd have to say that I like the administration panel of VBulletin best but that PHPBB is a winner hands down. While the features of VB are great, the forum crashes way too easily. It will work perfectly for weeks at a time and then suddenly there'll be a database error. I never saw this happen with any other forum software.

Andre
 
A bit late to the discussion but has anyone tried InVision board? Very nice and free... but, I am starting to realise that too much of a nice graphical interface doesn't work for a forum!
 
I have been using WebCrossing (not listed) for over two years to manage a big community (100.000 registered users and 30.000 active users).

That program give very good interoperability tools (we need to interface Oracle and several other enterprise systems) as well as good customization tools (we wrote a simple auction system with it in a week). We have higher requeriments that the typical yo-have-a-site-an-wanna-a-cool-forum-man.

We have had not a single crash of that server... good stuff, it is commercial though. However, they offer a very competitive hosting package that saves you from the hassle of managing server, Internet connection and stuff...

For instance, Apple switched from their in-house system to WebX sometime ago.


Just my two cents.


Dani
 
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