Hello there,

We were using XMB for our forums however.. due to a few problems it looks like we are going to have to ditch it.
My basic question is, which should we go for?

Ideally free would be best.. :)

Craig

Best overall board: vBulletin

Best free: I don't really know anymore, alot of free boards have had some problems lately, openbb, xmb, and all the spin offs..

I would say, VBulletin. It's easy on the server [PHP/MySQL] and is powerful enough for any forum application. Look at WHT for a great example.

We're just about to go VBulletin. I've been using XMB because it's what my clients get in the control panels, but I just want the VBulletin platform etc.. Money well spent, IMO. :)

Vb is the best.

I had several others including Ikon board, but they can't compare

Cheers:)

If it is for a business and if there is any possibility that you might get a lot of traffic or even think that you might then go for VBulletin. If it is a personal site then I would say use PHPBB2.

I use vBulletin for my site, and I love it. Yes, you have to pay for it, but it's completely worth it. It's very user friendly and very easy to install and manage.

As for a free forum, phpBB2 and IkonBoard are OK I suppose, but I still like vBulletin over them all :)

I am using the leased license now, but soon I will be getting the owned license for vBulletin, its the best forum software I had used before.

For free, I would say OpenBB. I kind of like Teemz (http://www.teemz.com) too, it's not that popular and it is a small type forum.

I looked at teemz - interesting, although since its written in Perl, if the site running it is of any size, they'll want to have a host that supports mod_perl or something similar.

check with your hoster to see what's available, you probably do not want to run a sizable forum as a CGI application.

i agree

I don't see where phpBB2 is lacking compared to vBulletin. :confused:

Definitely InvisionBoard

http://www.ibforums.com

;)

InvisionBoard is interesting - written in PHP but also with a Perl API no less. Too bad they didn't skip that fluff and put a Python API around it :)

Seriously - is an intriguing tool. Does it yet support PostgreSQL or is that still 'future'?

Originally posted by IceBlaZe
I don't see where phpBB2 is lacking compared to vBulletin. :confused:

Functionally PHPBB may work similarly but I notice the greatest difference in the admin panel of VB.

Also VB will be there to support you when something breaks so if your business depends on the board then go with one that is proven to scale and one that will provide support for the long haul.

I use them both but I only use PHPBB for personal sites (and it has worked just fine) but if my business depends on the board being up then I would go with a purchased board that comes with support.

I'd go for phpBB2 if you want something free, but it's a bit hard to customize.