forum software vote

If I asked you to develop a forum for me, which software would you use?

Please vote and post your reasons why.

Post the name of any other options that should be included.

Thanks.

 

SMF. Just because I am more experienced using it.

 

giving it a bump because I am trying to choose a forum software and would really appreciate more info. great thread.

 

Come on! Feedback please!

 

I only have experience with phpbb 2 and vB 3.x. Of the two, vB is by far the better product and it is not even close.

I understand that the phpbb folks are getting close to releasing phpbb 3 which is supposed to be a quantum improvement in the script, but I have not played with the available beta.

I know some folks who prefer IPB, but I have never liked the overall look and feel of it, so I never had an inclination to use it.

 

vbulletin.

Enough said.

 

Thanks Bernard - phpbb 3 sounds interesting, I have a look into that...

Keep voting!

 

My new personal favorite is Vanilla. Nice non-usual minimalistic approach.

 

Vanilla looks very clean -- do you know of any sites using it Mad Cat?

 

For right now, I would say phpBB, because its the only one I have had experience with - plus its free. A couple of things have concerned me about using phpBB, though. I have read a lot about it getting hacked into.

I have heard more forum owners preferring vB though. After I get more traffic to my site and its starts generating a little revenue, I will probably convert to vB just because so many experienced forum owners are running vB. I think that says a lot about it.

 

If you're a professional use professional software (vbulletin).

If you're not, use something else.

 

Even Shawn Said the big mistake webmasters do is by using phpbb on thier site I would highly recommend Vbulletin because it's powerfull good for SEO and spiders index it fastly even without vb seo or something
Saad

 

I would have first asked you, what for do you want that forum.
vBulletin is probably no. 1 for general forum usage.


Is that forum just for friends? Shall it be public, or private one. Do you want it to rank high in search results or don't care. Do you want just a small forum to easily integreate into the design of your website or will that be a purely forum based website. That and many other questions, before one can make the right choice.

 

Depends on how serious you are about your forum. If you're very serious, you'd go with vb

 

It'll be a forum linked to an existing company site that provides products within a rural economy niche. There is a lot of traffic that we could harness and hopefully keep loyal. The forum will be moderated by experts from the company who'll provide free advice and host discussions etc. - the company is currently asked for a lot of advice so there's good reason that the forum could succeed.

--So in short this needs to be professional but will never be massive (100's rather than 1000's of users). It'll be public and SEO is important as all traffic through the forum and parent site is potential revenue...

 

Anyone who knows anything about internet forums will know that a company using phpbb (or any free forum script) on it's site is CHEAP. Not the kind of image any serious business wants to project IMO.

 

vbulletin offcourse

 

IPB. I haven't tried vB yet, but might give it a shot next summer when school's out.

 

phpBB. I have 6 already. Takes me 30 hours to make it look unique and install some "nice" modifications.

 

i'd doubt all that many average surfers would really know the difference though, and theres far more of them.