Replying to Best Forum Software

The best forum software is definately, without a doubt invisionboard. Costly yes but when you have it it is spectacular. If you want to see a "preview" visit this free forum hosting

SMF is my bet...It will look like you have you're own forum program..well if you're site is no other than forum, mybe you will choose IPB.but its not free.

i definitely support vBullentin. after trying so many kinds of forum, i find it has the most simple and nice GUI. furthermore its user friendly and it seems much more faster then the rest. but too bad its not free unless hahahah (u guys should noe).

Ever really tried working with SMF, ever actually tried making yuor own skin, you will find they are all clutered as SMF has those options and people dont want rid of them. But I assure SMF can be a basic as you want it. It can be as small as you want or as big, the template engine of SMF is unique and powered only by your mind, also if all people dont try something out, something new it would never grow, sure theres "this grass is green enough" but the grass over there is better, we dont need to move, but it would be a good idea. phpBB has been on feature lock for about 2 years now, all other forums are still more advanced in some ways than them.

i like phpbb because it's free and most of the styles are better than other forums, as well as a lot of mods and support available.

ipb has the best administration, and the best default style. it's user friendly, but i hate that u have to pay for it >

vBulletin is the safest (i heard), but it's the ugliest default-wise, and it loads slower in general compared to the others. it's not that great with ur average user, but it's not bad.

Phpbb is the best free forum board for me. with exceptions to those commercial ones. Most will probably raise their eyebrows on phpbb because its "unsecure" as some conned it. But for me exploits are normal things in life. we have windows exploited, linux and even mac. Just keep these things updated and everything will be fine.

phpbb's inteface is better compared to other free boards out there. Ive tried out SMF, its good, features are good indeed, but its default interface is cluttered, default graphics are not good, organization of fonts, tables etc.. is not good. If you want a professional looking forum, or a midblowing forum interface im not sue if SMF would fit to that requirements You could cuztomize it, but for those who dont have any idea how, you will be stuck up with the "not so good" default ones. SMF templates are still limited as of now.

The edge of phpbb i guess...is its current widespread community and development team. You could download tons of skins, mods everywhere...customized for your site or for your community. Plus its user friendly site (phpbb.com)..compared to the cluttered unfinished one of SMF.

More reason for me to like phpbb is the upcoming PHPBB 3 Olympus version.

http://area51.phpbb....phpBB/index.php

The Olympus is very advance and quite comparable to Invision. Very good user management:preferences:user control panel. Well you could join the test forum to see it for youself.

User Control Panel is good, manage atachments, profiles, friends, foes, graphics etc... The Olympus version even supports flash signatures. plus Very advance administration controls. I hope they release it soon.

Anyway if youre willing to spend cash for a message board, the best one is V Bulletin. Stay away fro from forum boards which cant keep up its promise

Back in 2002 IPS said "Invision Board is completely free for both personal and commercial use, no catches, no "spyware", no hidden costs anywhere.
Apache, PHP and mySQL are all free, why should you pay for a bulletin board?".
Its still true now. Apache, PHP and mySQL are still free so why not IPS. It seems like you have lied to us.

Theres a few little cool things, youll pick them up now and again. Its an adventure playground!

SMF kicks ass so much. Been using it for a couple days...administrating it is quite easy and adding new themes was so simple it's not even funny

TOok me literally less than 3 minutes to get 3 news skins/themes set up and available to choose from.

If anybody wants to see what the default smf forum skin looks like, view mine below. I have 3 other skins installed, so you can view those if you register and change them in your profile.

http://unrealwp.asta...orums/index.php

Cheers!
ignition

UBB by Infopop didnt keep up, it was the biggest at a point but their features didnt improve greatly and the basic look stayed and still does, they didnt evolve like the rest and this dropped out. Many were better and free, but some people still use it, channel 4 and websuer do but nothing like the ammount of use of the others.

Spacewaste thank you, although give it a go now, a lot has improved and its getting better, maybe by the end of summer 1.1 will be out which incorpoorates a lot of improvements, more speed (I think aswell) and a lot of other little gizmo's to play with. Some things that other systems have but SMF lacks, SMF is growing and more and more people are using it, there are a lot of large forums starting to use it. It was actually even in a recent WebUser publication as the software that was the forum to use. phpBB has recently (through no fault of theres) declined people are starting to hack it and people are fed up upgrading every two weeks. The sooner there new system comes out the better but it does have some things I aboslutely hate in it (CVS) and some thing maybe 5 people will actually care about, but then its not finished so ill give it time, but SMF will still probably be my choice.

On my own sites I have only used phpBB, that being the leading open source, thus being free, board. But I don't think it's the best...

First of all the basic board without mods doesn't have all the features that , in my opinion, modern discussion boards should have. Biggest flaw IMO is the lack of subforums and attachments.

Then someone's gonna say "just install mods". Yeah, I have. But it's not working as well as I would like to. I have several mods, the categories hierarchy, attachments, few admin panel and member things. This all makes upgrading the board a real pain in the ass. Especially if you add a customed template there. To make things even worse, the old phpBB 2.0 series has had quite a lot of upgrades, mostly because of security issues.

Of other forum systems, I have never installed or administered any but from user point of view and from what people have told me vBulletin is the king of the hill. For me, being an avid open source supporter, its a bit hard to admit, but vBulletin really rules. It has all the features I believe you ever need, the version 3 is quite fast and from what I hear quite easily customizable.

Other than that I've heard a lot of good things about SMF, mainly it being lightning fast. Also Invision, like right here, is a neat system.

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Posts Merged Here - by vujsa
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Damn, I can't find the edit button...

What I needed to ask in addition was that is UBB (Ultimate Bulletin Board) still alive?
It's kinda of legendary system that was in use in many forums when I started posting actively into message boards. I believe it was one of the first to include the kind of forum view that is as default here.
I believe it started to diminish in use when php driven systems started to become more populer.