vBulletin is very well built, I like it a lot, few of my forums use it. It handles a lot of members and traffic.
yep, you are paying for convenience. Trust me, trying to build a form from scratch with this backend magnitude and security is ooober hard and can take 5+years to perfect. where, you can pay someone 120$+? or more (never checked) to have a fully customizable and fully upgradeable forum already built so you can work on your target audience instead of coding. Not to mention the company still codes and works on updates to keep everything flowing. why buy eggs when you can raise the chickens? less time growing more time eating
it is LMAO , laughing my ass off because I asked a question when the answer was right at the bottom of each DP page
Hi! There are alternatives..of course..but it seems anybody who is even half-serious about a forum goes with vbulletin. Invision is decent as well..although..again..as i said..most use vbulletin. On the open source side...I would recommend simple machines forums..I've seen it used in production by none other than the people that made/maintain fantastico itself. Take a look if you want: http://www.netenberg.com/forum/ It's open source with a twist..I remember some provisions restricting source code modification..I don't remember much more than that. Bryon
phpbb is the work of the devil. It got hacked so many times when I was running it. My own hand built one gets hacked less and im only realitively noob to this programming world
This is going to turn to a "which forum is better" fight http://www.vbulletin.com/ and http://www.vbulletin.org Both sites are supported
I'd like to advise you to stay away from SMF. It's not that it's insecure, but because of the lack of features and professionalism compared to vBulletin. Once and if your forums become large, you will regret starting off with SMF, because migrating your forums from SMF to vBulletin can be a pain in the butt.