What's the best user forum software?

Question

I'm setting up a niche community web site, I expect it to have a few hundred users to start, probably the maximum would be 1000-2000. Most of my experience has been with the ASP.Net/SQL Server world.

I'd like to know which low-cost or free user forum software is best, preferably one that could be fairly easily installed by someone with good windows knowledge but not much experience with mySQL, PHP, etc. I'm not opposed to using mySQL/PHP as I've heard some good packages are based on it, but would prefer to not have to incur a steep learning curve to get this up and going.

Solid dependability is important to me. I'd like a decent feature-set, but don't necessarily need all the bells and whistles.

Answer 1

I really like phpBB. It works well, is easy to setup and has a rich user community should you run into problems.

Check it out here: http://phpbb.com/

• Nicholas

Answer 2

I've used phpBB in the past whenever I've needed a forum. Its free, easy to configure, and there are plenty of mods for it. Also you don't need to know PHP to get it going. It also supports many type of databases.

Answer 3

I like Invision Forum. It's $149, but you get many more features, spam protection, and better quality overall.

http://www.invisionpower.com/

Answer 4

I would recommend to check out vBulletin. It supports nearly every feature you can imagine for a forum software including social networking, tagging, thread prefixes and many more. I am using it for some big communities (100,000 posts and up) and it scales very well. It's not free, but moderatly priced and in active development. It has a an active user community (http://www.vbulletin.org) with many extensions for vBulletin's plugin system (easy to install extensions).

Check it out at http://www.vbulletin.com
There is an excellent SEO plugin available as well: http://www.vbseo.org/

A list of the biggest vBulletin boards: http://rankings.big-boards.com/?filter=vBulletin,all
(you can use dropdown box to filter for other forum software)

Answer 5

As a user, I really love Vanilla. It's a bit different to the more prevalent phpBB & vBulletin systems, but it's really nice to use.

Answer 6

• 411asp
• ASPnetForum

Answer 7

If you weren't looking for a low-cost or free solution, I'd say vBulletin. However, as you are looking for something low-cost/free, I'm going to go ahead and suggest MyBB - it's a fantastic system that I've used reliably, for various sized forums, for a number of years now... it's lightweight, but has a good range of features and available plugins. If that isn't floating your boat, try phpBB, as has been suggested by others.

Answer 8

SMF - Simple Machines Forum has been around a while. It is stylable (ok, it's a word now), extensible and has quite a big community behind it. It runs on LAMP but is pretty easy to set up on shared hosts etc.

Answer 9

If your community site runs on Wordpress you should have a look at http://simplepressforum.com/. It is easier to integrate in to a Wordpress site than bbPress (oh, the irony) and also seems to have more features. It integrates with the main site's membership sign-ons. The developers seem pretty active.

Answer 10

bbPress anyone?

Answer 11

Without a doubt, vBulletin is the best software out there, not just becuase is it stable, and fast, but it also has a very large support base, ie modifications and software support. However, recently, Internet Brands, owner of Jelsoft-> vBulletin, have started to make changes which maximise their profits from vBulletin, and aren't to many customer's liking. Many licenses are being sold all over the place, but I will stick with them, becuase all of this is based on leaked information. Currently, nothing has been said, and so therefore, I disregard the leaked information, and continue as usual; renewing my license.

Answer 12

I've always liked PunBB (google it, I'm not allowed to post links yet). It's the opposite of phpBB and vBulletin. From their own about page:

PunBB is a fast and lightweight PHP-powered discussion board. It is released under the GNU General Public License. Its primary goals are to be faster, smaller and less graphically intensive as compared to other discussion boards. PunBB has fewer features than many other discussion boards, but is generally faster and outputs smaller, semantically correct XHTML-compliant pages.

And it truly is. Besides it's plugin friendly (most of the thing you'll want that it won't ship with can be found in their forum), free (as in GNU/GPL semi-free) and it's fast.

Edit: And there is a spin-off project called PunBB.NET which is, as one might guess, .NET based.

Answer 13

While phpBB is very popular, I would actually recommend the extensible, lightweight and sleek Vanilla.

Answer 14

A good resource website is Forum Software Reviews:

PhpBB 3 vs Simple Machines Forum vs vBulletin