Am planning for development in bbpress the best blog combined forum from wordpress and it would be a nice choice for beginners and those want to try new beginning.
I think nothing can compare with VB. But if you don't have the money, than phpBB isn't bad at all. It all comes down to SEO, I guess..
I have used iscripts Sonicbb software.it is really superb,very user friendly .I think this is better than phpBB and VBulletin.
vBulletin + vbSEO is best if you want to make some coin. Vanilla Forum is the best in terms of user interface, plus the paid hosting feature is pretty good. Take a look at Xenforo as well (new forum by the guys who made vbulletin)
For those who like vBulletin, do some googling on them. I used to be a diehard vBulletin customer, I have more than one forum using the platform right now. Even since Internet Brands bought them a couple years ago they have been steadily declining. So much so that I'm searching for another solution for my next site. Under Jelesoft vBulletin was great, but they are being driven into the ground by their new overlords.
I don't think so. Last year, you can say that. Now things are changing. I also want to use Xenforo but it is only good for new and small board. Now we (and also this forum) are happy with vBulletin.
I wish it were not true, but vBulletin is heading downhill. Nothing has changed which is exactly the problem. They released vbulletin 4.x over a year ago, however the style variables have not been locked, so no one is coding advanced skins for the platform as they will have to recode with each new release? This is progress? They already harvest the AdSense/Analytics data from their users, and I can't wait until the edit license conditions and start grabbing a percentage of my AdSense revenue. Like I said I use vBulletin because it was the best, but things are changing. The consensus is that Internet Brands was the absolute worst company to buy vBulletin. They aren't coders, they are online marketers who's hundreds of forums compete directly with the people they sell forum software to.