Which forum Software is Better??

I would like to run Forum and looking for some good Software. For this I have seen various options..

Free: PhpBB, MyBB, SMF
Paid: vBulletin, IPB

Please suggest me..

I read a lot of topics and concluded following things:

• Forum Software needs huge server resources.
• Paid Software like vB and IPB causes primary attraction for visitors as they think Site Admin have invested some good amount of money. Well, I think it may essential for initial stage when a forum has very low traffic.
• Personally I feel that vB looks more like forum and IPB is perfect for multi feature forum due to its look/theme.
• vB has only facebook login option but IPB has twitter integration also.
• If i talk about opensource/free forums I have not good experiance with phpBB.
• I need to invest about $200 for vB and $150 for IPB. Whereas I can resell my vB licence once, so it may be cheaper in this way, if I discontinue the forum or upgrade vB to next major version.

Waiting for your replies..

Thanks in advance..

 

Mybb is the way to go for a forum that is just starting out it has everything you need and more when you get 10k members and 100k post you can switch to vBulletin

 

I would also suggest starting with MyBB, it is the most user friendly and has the biggest community as of late.

 

Take a look at all of the above and XenForo (one you haven't mentioned, made by former vBulletin developers Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan). See which one works with you the best.

 

Thanks guys for your replies. Hmm! XenForo seems cheaper option..

Which software need less server resources?

Now, I am leaning towards MyBB.

 

Start out with Mybb. (It is as easy as VB to install mods and ect)
If all goes well migrate it to some other forum software.
I would not suggest to go for VB as the latest version sucks. The old version 3.5 is way more stable and uses less resource.
I would recommend going for Xenforo or IPB. When you have a good community.

 

Both phpBB and Vbulletin are Search Engine friendly as well as user friendly, so choosing any of this wont be a problem for you. vBulletin has its own Community which is very active and would help you for your queries. phpBB has also got an active forum where the development staff remain quite active to help you with bugs you may encounter. It would be your choice to choose either of the two.

 

You should be fine as long as you're not using vBulletin, to be honest. MyBB could actually do very well for you for a while and you don't have to even upgrade to a paid software.

I personally help run a MyBB (~120k posts) forum and I run a XenForo (<5k posts) forum myself, and neither of them have many server issues after most optimizations. Both also have good SEO, MyBB using the Google SEO add-on and XenForo on stock.

 

Are you using a vps? But I am still on Dreamhost Shared Hosting. Their are 2 WordPress Blogs hosted on the same account and both are not very busy (PP) no problem till now. May I survive with that. I mean 2 WordPress and 1 MyBB.

If you don't mind may I take a look to your forums. I have visited your cool forum "Mario Kart 3DS" what is another one?

 

I've started and ran many forums in the past using all the notable options and the one with IPB is the only that still survives and grows to this day.

phpBB got hacked and I never managed to find good mods. Simple machines was a mess with all the internal struggles for power inside their community, myBB is nice but you don't get any support when things go wrong since it is free. vBulletin and IPB are expensive but they are also forced to help you solve any issues reported and have large teams improving the software and adding more extensions that continue to be supported as new versions surface.

Believe me, it will be a mess if you start to customize your forum and suddenly discover that you can't upgrade as there is no support for your plugins and you can't also keep using an old version as it would be rendered to exploits.

I've just spent even more money to acquire new extensions and upgrades for IPB, however it has also boosted the forum quality and services that I won't need to worry about being supported in the future. This way I can focus on what is really important, my community.

 

MyBB is best. Digital Point uses MyBB!

 

Its vB my dear!

 

I would recommend vBulletin. Maybe it is not free, but I have some good experiences with it.
Great administration tools and big community.

 

Just because one popular forum uses a given type of software, it does not mean that you cannot find other examples with other forum software types.

And as mentioned, Digital Point is vBulletin based.

 

Oh, whoopsies!

Well, hackforums uses MyBB and hackforums is much bigger that DP!

 

I'm sorry, that statement is so dumb. First you don't even see that DP is based on vBulletin and then off you go to another dumb statement without double-checking what you are writing.

Here are some facts about who is "much bigger" than what.

Topics
DP: 15,465,760
HF: 12,435,282

Threads
DP: 2,097,167
HF: 1,231,497

Members
DP: 484,755
HF: 251,224

Alexa (for what its worth)
DP: 201
HF: 2812


You are correct about HF be the biggest myBB based forum, but it is not bigger than DP by the account of activity.

In fact, DP is even small when compared to other vBulletin based forum such as http://forums.offtopic.com/ which has 143,830,092 topics and 4,829,268 threads.

So, can you please think for 5 minutes before writing non-sense posts just to increase your post count around here?

Thanks.

 

The word "best" is somewhat subjective; it really all depends on what your needs are as a webmaster. I've had great experiences with phpbb. It's been around for ages, has a good user and developer base, and is decently stable and secure. A lot of people use it to run small forums, but I've seen it run huge ones just as effectively. The truth is that no forum software, no matter how expensive of feature-rich, is a substitute for a knowledgeable sysadmin and a good site design. I've been using vBulletin 4 now for well over 6 months and am happy with it. I have never used IPB, however I've seen some very pretty looking forums (both small and large) which run it, and it's certainly no less impressive-looking than any other package. XenForo I find the most exciting, they're a fairly new company however given the developer's history they are certainly one to watch in the near future.

Bottom line: consider what your budget is, what features you want, consider your technical expertise, and pick the software that best fits your needs based on those criteria.

 

Sorry, I just saw some MyBB like features on here and I thought HF had more thatn that. I should have checked.Anyways, I'm a MyBB pluygin dev. and I think MyBB is pretty friendly for plugins. How's vB or phpbb?

 

I'd say start out with a free forum like MyBB or SMF and then when your community gets bugger transfer to a paid one.

 

The other one is http://www.dashingforums.com. I'm only a maintenance guy but I host them.

As for the hosting, I am on HawkHost shared hosting, actually. I don't plan on moving to a VPS anytime soon, and I might potentially actually move to semi-dedicated hosting when this expires. HawkHost personally throttles me quite a lot.

HackForums has been growing much more quickly than Digital Point, but it's not there quite yet .