Best forum software?

[deathmetal]

I'm kicking off a new site for a client and they want a forum. It looks like the biggest contenders are vBulletin ($250), phpBB (which is what this forum runs on, with some mods) and SMF. Anyone here have experience with these? Which is the best, in your view?

 

[Richard Burley]

Don't know if this has anything to do with your query, but this is the easiest to read and use forum that I've ever encountered. Take into consideration that my experience is hardly exhaustive, but still...I like it.

 

[puros_bran]

Go with whatever gives you total control of your forum. Do not handcuff yourself to any 'free' solution unless it genuinely is free, free with strings is not free. (More panty wasted Muricans need to realize that).

BoB was a fly-by-night solution that turned into its own problem..

 

[Briar Spirit]

If you need a free forum solution I would recommend MyBB, SMF is okay but development behind the scenes is a bit quirky.

For a commercial product I would recommend Xenforo, it is faster and more powerful than vBulletin, vBulletin has a certain prestige behind it in some fields but it is now owned by a multi national business machine and development couldn't care less about the existing customer.

 

[deathmetal]

Good suggestions, thanks. Xenforo looks interesting, like vBulletin made more current. I share your analysis of the situation there.

SMF has its ups and downs but in my experience is very functional. The community is a bit odd, but less adversarial than the phpBB community in my experience.

MyBB is also a good suggestion.

I found some others, most of which are disasters, but a few good ones. Phorum looks interesting but I want to look at the internals. Seems fast, although a bit... barebones.

 

[Brewdude]

I'm certainly not qualified to speak to speak to this question but have you considered this one-

https://www.phpnuke.org/

http://www.gnu.org/

It's a platform I was on for many years in another forum, and seemed to be fine.


HTH


Cheers,

RR

 

[deathmetal]

That would be a great way to build a CMS including a forum, but I meant more the appearance: Phorum is bare, minimalistic and did not seem to have as many themes available. I think it's sort of the point, a no-BS forum for tech geeks.

I like Xenforo, a lot. As it turns out, I misrecognized it as vBulletin with some plugins on another forum, and really enjoyed it there. Snappy response and visually elegant. I think that's a winner.

I wish I could get excited about phpBB and to a lesser degree, SMF. Under the hood, SMF is probably a better forum, and it has many more intuitive and useful features, but it's also, just, pukey. It looks kludgy and has some stupid nerdy aspects that may it excruciating.

(And while I would love to get involved with one of these projects, there's a time deficit plus an unwillingness to beat back the day-trippers.)

The final running includes Xenforo, Phorum, and myBB. Thanks all for the advice.