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good forum software?

londonweb

londonweb

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 14, 2005
260
0
london
Anyone know any good forum software?

This one (ie. vBulletin) is actually one of my favourites as a user, but I've been asked to set one up for a client and I've been looking at an open-source one called phpbb which seems to do the same job and be completely free at the same time. Does anyone else have any experience of it?

check out here: www.phpbb.com

suggestions welcome.
 
I've done phpbb and vbulletin and vbulletin was far superior, but also not free.

The admin panel in vbulletin has many many options.

If it was for you (personal interest site) I would say PHPBB, but for a client I would definitely go with vbulletin.
 
dr427 said:
I've done phpbb and vbulletin and vbulletin was far superior, but also not free.

The admin panel in vbulletin has many many options.

If it was for you (personal interest site) I would say PHPBB, but for a client I would definitely go with vbulletin.
Click to expand...

I can only second dr427, if you want a free forum, you should better stick to PHPBB, but if you have the money and want to have more features, then vbulletin is your friend ;)
 
I'm going to recommend punBB once again over phpBB, as punBB doesn't seem to have the security problems that plague phpBB. punBB is a very lightweight piece of software, is standards compliant, and is easily customizable.
 
I'd like to put in a vote for Vanilla.

Its a different kind of forum, but after poking around I have found I prefer it greatly to vbulletin or phpbb. But it depends largely on your needs. Check it out though and see if it is for you or not.
 
great stuff guys.

phpbb claims to have resolved many security issues in it's latest version. I'll have a look at the others you mention too.
 
SMF 1.1 is where it is at - http://simplemachines.org it is still at Release Candidate stage but I often use it and amazed at how much better it does things than either vBulletin or IPB does.

For example SMF is the first forum software I have used where the latest/unread posts function actually works how you would expect it to, if I use one more vB forum and sit there hitting reload wondering why no results are showing I'm going to scream (for some reason you need to click the New posts link again to refresh the list and not just reload the page).

Plus SMF is fast especially with the AJAX post editing in 1.1 RC2.
 
vbulletin is by far the best. I have two copies of vbulletin but currently they have issues with importing the latest version of phpbb to vbulletin. This is why my website is still using phpbb =/ Oh well. I have a mac board I'm working on now so I will get that vbulletin license in use ;) link to the mac board will be in my sig once its ready for posting.
 
londonweb said:
great stuff guys.

phpbb claims to have resolved many security issues in it's latest version. I'll have a look at the others you mention too.
Click to expand...
i've had one of my phpBB forums hacked a couple times. the first was on an old version and they really did a number on it, had to restore from backup. the second was fairly harmless but still annoying.

there's still some kind of bug where hackers are signing up for new accounts in such a way that, when i go to the admin page to delete them, they're able to replace their userid with "admin" in the username field. that means whenever i Submit changes on that form, i'm prompted to see if i really mean to change the Admin password. sneaky bastards.

i've had to enable the feature that means all new accounts must be approved by me, and change all the forums to be readable only by registered users. a real PITA.
 
I've had as of yet no problems with my phpBB board at System 7 Today, which has recently exceeded 1500 posts. Hopefully it continues this way. I haven't updated since 2.19 or whatever it is.
 
Vbulletin is the best forum software, and it's widely used. And it has excellent support and plugins.
 
Thought I'd throw this out there, haven't used it but saw it online the other day: http://simple-press.com/

Simple: Press - the feature rich, completely integrated and fully scalable forum plugin for WordPress.

In case the website you're building also includes a blog.
 
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