It's even easier with the built-in Package Manager in SMF (and doubly easy with the plug-in and products manager in vBulletin if you want to go commercial). How long have they been "working" on that? Since like 2003-2004? It was certainly before vBulletin 3.0 was released and we're now at 3.6. It was also before SMF 1.1 was released. Don't hold your breath.
I use SMF now on a board (mainly so that I can brag I use all the big 5 scripts and get people pay for skins) but I am not pleased. I am not talking about the features, it's filled with it. But that's not what I look for in a script. I want easy skinning and hacks (I can install my features, it relaxes me ). But I worked for 5 hours I think to port an already made theme to SMF. I had few tables and buttons and couldn't make it. I deleted the forum and in few hours I started again (because I didn't find a decent converter for myBB since that's a less pain to skin). After other 5-7 hours of working ON ANOTHER theme than the default I kinda made it. I still have some problems and it's not perfect, but it's kinda OK. That's the first and last time I use SMF that's for sure. For people who don't like to mod the theme it's OK. but for a skin designer it's even worse than VB (and I am getting my share of issues with that too). I got sick of all those parse errors and the css that seems to not work as I want. And this comes from a person who kinda worked some on the forums and considers herself to be an advanced skinner and admin. I wonder how nice it is for beginners to mod those themes.
I see your point, dojo, but from the viewpoint of most forum owners, the issue is how easy it is to update, install already-created themes, and install mods. And among the free choices, SMF does all that pretty well.
I found this: http://www.forums-free.com/ 1GB, phpBB3, Unlimited Access. 40+ Themes, 30+ Languages, Personalization... and more.
A few days back, a friend of mine introduced me a new forum website , www.forumity.com. I tried creating a testing forum to see its functionality and i feel its quite easy to use with some powerfull features for mods. Here are some god point i would like to share about this forum. 1) phpBB 2) has unlimited bandwidth 3) alot of templetes to choose from 4) supports multi language 5) phpBB SEO mod installed 6) supports sub domain 7) top domain support 8) unlimited attachments Although the site is quite new but i believe given time it will grow to be a big community. Try visiting www.forumity.com
In my opinion, Invision Power Board and Proboards are the two best free forum software and hosting forms.
Invision Power Board offers two free services. Go here: invisionfree.com and here: ipbfree.com PHPBB is also hosted software, I used to have a PHPBB forum. Most websites are not hosted by their owners.
First off, those are third-party services and are not affiliated with IPS. By "hosted software", I mean that you cannot download and install that particular forum script on your own server. phpBB does not count as "hosted software" because you can download and install it on your own server.
Does one have to pay for their domain name when using a VBulletin forum? IPS developed invisionfree.com.
I am using SMF 1.1.8 and I think it's a good alternative...especially if you want an AdSense revenue sharing functionality