The best forums software?

[rhyswynne]

bbpress. It's built on Wordpress' platform, and has akismet. However if I am to start a new forum, It'll be with vbulletin. I use it in work, and it's great.

[Resonate]

Woltlab Burning Board 3

[olddocks]

vbulletin rules and it rocks! many of people get addicted to forums just because of vbulletin.

[arunpattnaik]

I like phpbb and MyBB alike. but vB is the best!

[zinruss]

vBulletin have my vote. Phpbb and smf is free but those are not a good option if you really care about your board. phpbb is not secure, easy to hack. Smf board will not rank well because spiders hate session ids

[xhan]

punbb is good too

[Bionic_Woman]

I've only tried two of the software mentioned so I can only give an opinion for their usage.

I tried SMF. First it was very awkward getting into the admin settings and trying to sort it all out. I found this lacking in features bigtime and wasn't that keen on the overall structure of the forum itself imo.

Invision Power Board is what I am using now and I really like the board setup and the admin panel which is very easy to navigate and to sort out all your settings. When we have to do upgrades I also have to re-add all the modifications that I have installed through the Cpanel (usually a few edits and not entirely the whole mod) and through our admin panel for the skin templates. You get used to it but 3.0 is out 'hopefully' sometime this year and I expect there will be some great new features.

At a glance I feel that Vbulletin looks a lot more professional but I will stick with IPB overall.

[djpassion]

phpbb is good. defo my second choice

but first choice would be vbseo with vbulletin for seo wise plus vbulletin has a massive community .com and .org vb have the most hacks too so yeah vbseo + vbulletin for the win

[TnT]

I've used phpBB for a number of years and look after two Vb sites, the main reason for the phpBB is because it's free, but as with everything you get what you pay for. If you really want to manage your forum and keep a watchfull eye on it 24/7 then phpBB or any of the free forums is going to be ideal. I've had far less hassle with the Vb forums, simply because they don't go wrong, and moderators and admins on those forums can be trusted enough not to wipe the thing off, where as phpBB it does give you the ability to self destruct the forum.

A few years ago we had one forums account locked down by the host, as some moderator was playing with the word filtering system and included the word 'the' in a filter phrase - well you can imagine what happened!

Vb is brilliant, if you're going to try and cover your set up costs / hosting costs, at over £200 for a brand free package along with some extras it's costly to those who just want a forum for a community without any cost recovering excersises. (cheaper to buy Vb in dollars by the way).

My opinion is phpBB is for those who keep things up to date and monitor them heavily and wish to pay nothing but can expect spam or a hack at some point, and Vb for a ease of use, installation, support back up and to know that you've paid for a brand for reason, because you'll be secure-ish.

If you have the pennies spare - Vb - if not - save up! It's worth it!

[ohsuria]

1st: vBulletin
2nd: phpBB

but I've also seen some great forums using smf