Hate to rehash an old thread, but look at http://www.Big-Boards.com. Out of the top 5 forums on the internet, not one of them uses vBulletin. However, the largest forum in the world uses phpBB.
Again, I voted for vBulletin. Yet another thread to tell you which is better among the options. Can't really put the two together for several reasons. Price & Performance are among the others. vBulletin has clearly taken the top.
If you can't afford/don't want to spend the money on vBulletin, phpBB would obviously be a good option. The new version, phpBB3 or Olympus has many new features that are huge improvements over the previous versions. If you are willing to pay the price tag, vBulletin is definitely worth it. It has many great features, lots of modifications that are very easy to install and is all around good.
I just can't understand with all the votes for vBulletin, why very few of the larger boards use it, and the largest (by far) forum on the internet uses phpBB.
We all know that the largest forums on the internet use phpBB, but that doesn't really mean it's better than vBulletin. I've used both systems and phpBB is easy customizable and free while vBulletin has more core features and plugins are also easy to install on it. In the end, I prefer vBulletin because of a friendlier user interface and I find the admin panel for phpBB is very basic. On the other hand, phpBB3 has a really good admin panel and a great interface too but in the end I prefer vBulletin.
Being free makes phpBB more accessible to the public. I myself am not registered on any phpBB powered forums. Mainly vB boards. When you say "very few large boards use it" you probably don't really mean it.
Well, if you look at BigBoards, some of the biggest boards on the internet use phpBB but at the same time right behind them are vBulletin boards that are huge.
WOW! I have never seen phpBB3 before, I didn't think I'd go near it ever again after seeing vbulletin but this looks good admittedly.
I only visit vBulletin Boards, not administer them so my opinion isn't fully relevant, but I guess I haven't seen alot of customisation out of vBulletin Boards in comparison to say a phpBB board modified with "Category Hierarchies". phpBB3 is really nice, but phpBB modified with ptiirhik's "Category Hierarchies" is untouchable in my opinion. If I knew vBulletin could do all of the things that I can do with that mod (plus some), I would probably pay for the license. For me, the money isn't really an issue, I just haven't seen a good example of a highly customized vBulletin Board. They all look like this Board.
unlimited categories within categories within categories. I use the simple categories mod myself, I only need to go one level deep in almost all cases - and it leaves more of the code untouched so I can modify my forums even further. Hey - a great mod you should look at is the Save As Drafts mod and the EZPortal mod.
Not only the functionality of subforums within subforums, within subforums etc, but you can use different templates for each to really provide a larger feel to your site. If you look at the college forum in my sig - go to Michigan and look at the schools in Michigan. When you go in that part of the forum, it changes to the individual school colors. You can also add icons to each etc. The backend is MUCH improved, and the security is better. I haven't really scratched the surface on everything it does because I kinda lost interest in the site. I just haven't had the time to pursue that project for awhile so you'll see it's rather dead...
Well, I am always on the lookout for projects that are dead/dying. Hence why I am still working on founding VulturesInc. Olympus will have features galore - however the mods will be scarce for the first few months I figure. How long do they plan to continue phpbb2 support?