I was wondering what you guys think is the most user friendly forum to use. I am thinking of running a forum aimed at older and probably less internet savvy users. I've got that used to posting on forums and registering on forums that it has become second nature. So what in your opinion is the most new-user friendly forum?
http://www.ovbb.org/ seems easy to use, and navigate. However, they should have some basic internet knowledge, or else they won't get too far even with that script, or something as basic as WWWThreads.
That looks a nice site, any idea how it compare with VB security wise? Is your gamer forum running on it?
I always recommend vBulletin. This site (digitalpoint) uses it, as do most of the big sites. I have 3 vb sites and they're easy to administer and easy for users to post on, plus they have thousands of additional add-ons which can really make your site stand out.
Thanks for the advice everyone. I like Vbulletin, but like I said I've got so used to seeing/joining forums its hard for me to know which is the simplest for my visitors to use. I suppose it's down to VB and IPB really; though the open source one posted by 1-3-3-7 looked nice and simple to use as well.
My forum runs MyBB -> MyBBoard.com However, I also run another forum with that ovBB, but it lacks a lot of features. It's just for basic forum functions, like making stickies, deleting posts, and replying and making threads. There's no ad mods, arcade, or report to moderator and such. It's only for basic forums that only use plain discussions, and allow the users to have a signature. It runs pretty fast too, and a low load on the SQL.
are there any free forums to use? I dont think mine will be popular enough to justify paying a big fee.
SMF is free, so is myBB, phpBB, and a few others. I'd consider SMF, though I hate its search system and some of its themes are useless.
Yeah for a free one I quite like SMF too, though sometimes some of the plugins can be a bit probmatic. I don't think that SMF is for me on the site I have in mind though, as I don't think it's as user frienly as VB or IPB.