I want to create a forum for students and I have some ideas and domain names and templates. I just don't know how to design it. I want the forum to be open-ended, stylish (in the two or three colours I chose), and to have ranks for certain posters. Should I buy a VBulletin account and start from there? How would you make a simple forum like this: www.autoadmit.com
i used VBulletin for a long time myself,and it was great,and very simple to use.now tho i have added a phpbb forum to my site,and im liking it as well,best of all its absolutly free,where VBulletin will end up costing you a min of $150 just to get started most hosting companys even have Fantastico included in CPanel to install PHPBB for you,so makes it only that much easier,there just arent as many mods/themes etc available for it compared to VBulletin
vBulletin is the one to choose if you are serious about your forum venture. I've tried them all and vBulletin just beats them down right. When you signup you get access to a special plugins and themes site which provides tons of Free plugins and themes for the vBulletin platform (vbulletin.org) phpBB3 is fine if you're happy about paying for a template. Most of the free templates avaliable for it are pretty bad.
PHPBB is free and more than enough for most needs. I suggest you'll get it, and spend your money on a guy who is very smart with CSS, to give you an original color combination.