Best free forum software for integrating / ripping apart?

It's not rare that someone wants to start a site that is more than just a forum, but doesn't want to write the forum section of the site from scratch.

So what's the best for integrating? I plan to hack apart and redesign the forum completely to blend with the rest of my site and tie into it really well. Often, some sites have forums that might as well just be another site because they're a plain old install. I'd like good flow between the forum and other sections.

I've messed around with phpbb quite a bit over the years, but before I just pick it I thought I'd ask if there's something else out there that is more integration friendly.

Thanks!

 

PunBB and MiniBB are my favorites - simple but easy to integrate. If you need more featured, try simple machines (but it's not as easy to integrate)

 

I like bbPress as it's made by the people that made wordpress

 

MyBB is rather powerful if you're going to tear it apart. It has a plugin system and can also be customized in many ways. Someone even converted it from a forum software into a job posting system so it can be heavily edited if necessary.

BMR777

 

phpBB3 has come a long way in terms if integration.

 

Thanks for the help guys. I'll definitely take a look at some of those. I'm leaning towards something ultra simple now on top of hackable.

I started to realize that mine might be so tweaked / integrated I might wind up writing it myself. But, then I'd have to worry about scalability...