I heard a lot of people say vbulletin is the best choice. However, I've found many argument saying vbulletin do not worth the money and the version still very old and do not follow market trend. The thing is I dont mind paying for vbulletin license, BUT still if there is any free software out there that is better than vbulletin please do tell me. The choice is vbulletin,mybb,phpbb,smf and invision... I like digitalpoint forum(vbulletin) cause they can create many section and customize and I heard it seo friendly, but does any forum software offer and better?? and if does anyone know what kind of forum software www.dpreview.com is using?? thanks
vbulletin is good... but you can also just test the water with something that's free... phpBB. MyBB... PunBB... etc.
I hear MyBB is the most similar to Vbulletin but it is free. Xenforo is a new brand that I am hearing good things about. You should at least check them out. I know someone who's running a demo on it. Not sure if it's still open to have a look at though. My own forum runs on SMF, which is free, but it is heavily customised. Which if you really get into your forum, you're going to want to do regardless, I think. Vbulletin used to be top of the line but since being bought out they seem to have lost their way and stumbled a bit.
I have a demo for xenForo myself (don't know if Groovystar refers to me, because I know her), if you want to try it. I don't really recommend using it in a live forum until at least the release candidates come out, but it has been very stable, definitely more stable than the track record of vBulletin under Internet Brands. http://xen.crystalcoconut.com Username: admin Password: xenForo1 I myself though am a MyBB guy. When I think about, I can get most of the actual SEO-related stuff from the vBulletin+vBSEO offering on MyBB. I mean, my own forums have the header tags, the FURL, rel=canonical, descriptive titles, dynamic metas, etc. Really, I want to know what can a paid option do that a free option cannot?
Thanks heaps - I have been trying to decide whether to switch from SMF to MyBB or XenForo, but the lack of a xenforo admin demo and any information makes it hard to decide.
OMG that's you from forum promotion? Yup you're the one I thought of, because I had a brief look at it myself a week or so back. It's very generous of you to be running that demo. Otherwise it is very hard to really get a taste of whether a given paid software is what you want before you buy and they are quite pricey usually.