I have recently come across plush forums. This is a hosted forum solution. Does anyone know of something similar that can be self hosted like vBulletin?
Yes that is not bad but I'm looking for something more modern and that will focus on threads not categories.
There are tons of plugins for mybb that can achieve pretty much anything you need it to. It was the first forum cms I ever used way back in my newbie days and even I could put it to great use.
I would use ZenForo myself. It can do about anything that you want to do and will be way cheaper than plush given the cost. 3 Months of plush covers the cost of Buying XenForo. If you are looking for a free solution then I would go with myBB. I have used this myself and out of the several free forum platforms I have used myBb was the best overall. XenForo is the way to go in my opinion and as an owner and user of the platform,you won't find anything better overall.
Start a forum with vBulletin or Xenforo as both of them are having wide range of plugins for expanding the features.