Best Forum Software?

does anyone know what the prettiest, ie the best looking, forum software is? It seems like they all look generally similar

 

SMF, no doubt. I REALLY love them, you should try it, if you need help with it, just pm me, I Ill be glad to help you !

 

I love vB....all other sucks..i used almost every forum software...Now sticked with vB..

 

vBulletin is an unconditional leader in the sphere of forum.

 

vBulletin
MyBB
Invision Power Board
XtremeBB
SMF

 

Have lean from the folks' words, i know that VBulletin and ipb is paid software, and Vbulletin is better now and will be surpassed by ipb in the future, and SMF is the best free forum software among mybb, phpbb,punbb, and phpbb is not so secure, and have a lot of mods to add and need some hack knowledge! So, if i can afford the fee and select the vBulletin, and if wanna use a free ones, come to SMF! Thanks, i learn this!

 

If you have some money, use Vb. It's damn good! If you wanna try something free, you can use phpBB or SMF. But I prefer phpBB than SMF.

 

When I didn't have the money to pay for it, I used phpbb for about three years of my forums existence. After I built up a good community, I was able to get my members to help cover the license fee for vbulletin. They have all agreed that its by far the best decision in the switch. We've been using it for about 3 years now

 

Over the past 4 years I have ran sites with all kinds of forum software. This includes phpnuke, postnuke, dragonfly, md pro, phpbb, smf, fireboard, and vbulletin, only to name a few. And so far vbulletin has been the best out of the bunch. And that is from an all around point of view. While some forum software might have good security, while others might have good spam protection, VB has it all. And because of the number of modifications, its probably the best rounded forum solution on the market.

Besides VB, I am a member on a lot of forums that use IPB. And from an end user point of view, I like IPB about as much as I like VB. But I have never used IPB on a forum - but that might be changing in the near future.

 

I suggest PHPBB just because its free. Its best for starters.

 

Vbulletin - Easy and best.

 

I love Vbulletin too and its really easy to use.

 

From this thread it seems like VBulletin is the way to go.

However, I have the following questions regarding VBulletin 4.0 Publishing Suite:

1. It says it has a blog capability. Will this work with WordPress or is it its own blog software?

2. Is it best to install the forum and the blog in separate sub-directories?

Hope someone can help as I want to add both the blog and forum capabilities to my current website.

Thanks

Unlockology

 

vBulletin's blogging capabilities are wordpress-independent. It's part of the whole publishing suite.

I can tell you right now, a lot of these guys have only used vBulletin. I was a vBulletin license holder myself, and am also an IPB license holder. I also have used phpBB, SMF, and MyBB. To be honest with you, you don't really need to pay for forum software. I would definitely disagree with vBulletin. vBulletin 4 has been known to have a ton of bugs, and the hardest on server load (compared to other forums), both on space and bandwidth (200+ queries on default configuration). Their Admin CP is also more user-unfriendly than any other software out there. SMF's forum support for crying out loud is better than vBulletin's ticket support (if you want good support, IPB's ticket support is significantly better). Of the five tickets I sent to vBulletin, they actually only tried helping me once. With the other four tickets, I had to go to someone else. IPB's support is mainly good because they'll fix your problem for you and then tell you what they did so that you can easily do it yourself if you run into the same problem again. Oh, by the way, I didn't even mention their phone support for new standard license holders (30 days) and business ones. Ask guys like Brandon Sheley. Guys like him have used vBulletin for years and recently converted to IPB because of the latest pricing controversy, which actually got quite a lot of users converting to IPB.

If you wanted to test drive a vBulletin, you can go here.
http://www.forum-software.org/

If you wanted to test drive an IPB, go to their official site, where they'll give you one.
http://www.invisionpower.com

If you wanted to test drive a free forum software, well, it's free. You can download and play with it all you want.

 

@Unlockology:

I'm using IPB which has a blog facility and I also use Wordpress. I keep Wordpress as the main site entry page and use it largely as a CMS. The blog in the forum is used by the members of the forum. It works out quite well. You should also look into IPB and their blog, I like the latest versions, and the support is very good. They even install it for you for free.

 

as my experience as a user of forums
many largest community forums is using vbul as it forum software.
such this forums

 

vBulletin 3 s the best one i think

 

I have vBulletin 3.8 on my Health Forums and I enjoy it a lot. Previously I have used PunBB and Vanilla, both of which are great because of their simplicity.

 

I like SMF . as PHPBB is a bit weird . I wasn't able to do some changes in PHPBB . so i am using SMF its great .

 

Does vbulletin come with the ability to add all the advertising banners?

Or is that another plugin that need programing in?