Drupal + Forum

Hi all,

Which forum CMS is best for work with drupal?

I used vBulletin before with drupal. It has a good users bridge.

But vBulletin is paid and I'm looking for open source solution.

Please suggest a good free forum CMS with drupal user integration.

thnx

 

Have you ruled out just using the Advanced Forum module? It's not the most feature-rich forum in the world but it's got most of what you'd ever need and is built specifically for Drupal so there are no hassles with integration or bridging.

 

But if I'm getting 1000's of visitors then which one will be better to manage, Advanced Forum or phpBB/vBulletin?

 

I've honestly never had to worry about running such a large forum, so this is purely speculation, however...

When I think about all the things you'd need to do, lock/edit/move posts, ban users, sticky post, see forum stats Advanced Forum should be fine. You'd also get the advantage of having things like the userpoints and user badges modules already integrated into the author bit on forum posts.

On the other hand, last I heard version 2 had some problems with unread posts in subforums not being included in the unread post count, or something along those lines. Might be worth a quick trawl through the issue queue to see if there are any dealbreakers outstanding. I've used vBulletin too and that came with it's own share of bugs so if the choice is between free bugs or paid bugs I'd go with free

 

Yes, I tried the Advanced Forum and looking for more powerful forum solution.

 

kiramanic, that's very nice eloboration. I'm looking anything which has least maintenace( AF vs Free Forums) since I don't have support personnel except for myself. I was thinking may be phpBB should be good one, because if my forum becomes popular, I can move to vBulletin or IP, as migration is simple. I fear that may be quite difficult for AF or Drupal Form. What do you say?

 

Could you please elaborate?

 

Advanced Forum is a drupal module developed mainly by one person and it will never as feature rich as dedicated forum software.
If you have 1000s of visitors you should be able to monetize your traffic and pay for the vBulletin (or other) license easily. If you really want free software phpBB is ok, just upgrade it often!

 

I haven't had any problems with advanced forum yet, but I don't have too many users. Do you know if it would be possible to port advanced forum/drupal users to phpbb once a site is already up and running? I would have to wait for the phpbb integration to come out for drupal 7 though.