I am just wondering which free board is the best...please vote..

I am currently using phpbb, but I am looking around at some other alternatives as well....

This has been done b4 - but OK. PhpBB has my vote 'cause its the only one i have used apart from vB

The WebWiz ASP one is pretty good.

http://www.webwizguide.com

My vote goes to other: Invision Board (http://ibforums.com).

Invision Board rulz...

phpbb is my favorite, but Invision Board is a close second.

Thanks for the input, I have heard alot about invision board..I will look into it tonight.

Just a newbie question, I am currently using phpBB2, if I switch to invision board, I can port the whole database over , is that right? I want to save all the messages in the forums. How do I do that? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Ok, I found some help about PhpBB conversion to invision...but I will still appreciate any comments. :D

you guys will probably hate me for this but..

asp.net forums beta 1... it rocks, and is probably faster than all those php/mysql forums on a proper win2k/.net/sql server machine

They definitely do :D

I voted for other too - invision board.

I like both Invision Board & phpBB2, but my vote went to phpBB2

I think i would lean toward invision board with PHPBB2 running a close second

Count my vote for Invision Board :)

Chalk another one up for Invision Board...

Invision Board :D

phpbb and ikon.

I run a phpBB (that got wiped out in the HostPacket fallout :mad: ) and have enjoyed it. Invision Board is very interesting, though, and I've considered switching if I could find a skin that I like. To be honest, it is a two horse race between those two with all the others being wannabe's.

To those who have used both phpBB and Invision and made your choice...what is it that stands out about your choice that made it be #1?

I'm thinking about giving up on phpBB. Had trouble restoring my database, but the main thing is the lack of skins and the fact that they don't have this feature that VB has (password protecting sections).

Does Invision board have that feature? Say a bunch of people sign up for the board, and there's this one section I only want a select few to be able to see, can I just set it up where they are password protected and then give out the password to the group? I hated adding each member to a select group and then giving that group viewing capabilities in phpBB.

Hmm...I've never heard of the "invision" Board:
http://www.invisionboard.com :confused:

Is there a reason why most here think Invision is better than phpBB? Is it just fun to go against the grain or is their a distinguishing feature that make Invision superior?
Cleaner code? Faster? More customizable? More stable with larger forums?

I was just about to install phpBB and now I'm thinking twice about installing it. I can code PHP so customization should be no problem as long as the code is fairly straight forward. :D

thanks. ;)

My vote goes to Invision too.

JD

WHY? :D

I'd say invision board

It would be interesting to see some benchmarking done to compare phpbb2, invision, yabbse and VB to see who is the overall speed champion.

Other then that, people are just voting on what forum looks the coolest :-p

Originally posted by fireform90
Other then that, people are just voting on what forum looks the coolest :-p

But since you can change the look of any of them to look like whatever youd like, wouldnt it be a tie than?

Originally posted by Acronym BOY


But since you can change the look of any of them to look like whatever youd like, wouldnt it be a tie than?

Aside from some differences in useability, yes :)

PhpBB is mine. Yabb is also neat.

I'm not a fan of ikonboard. Its a good forum but not my cup of tea.

Originally posted by fireform90
Aside from some differences in useability, yes :)

But that can be changed also. You can add things to the admin control panel, you can move around chunks of php and pretty much do whatever you want to them. In the end it does come down to efficiency and scalability, as you said. The rest is all easily modifiable by the user.

Well that the million dollar question then:

In the end it does come down to efficiency and scalability...

Which of the boards is the most efficient and scalable? I've only seen really large boards, like webhostingtalk.com, running vBulletin.

vBull slowed greatly when I saw it in use at a forum with 700+ people online at once. But than again I thought that it was the database that was holding them back, had they had a better database setup, they would have been a lot better.

I have seen InfoPop scale very well, up to 13000 on line at once with no visible lag.

I have only seen phpBB scale to 900 or so online at once and than performance really started to slow to a crawl, but I think hardware was the limiting factor there.

Invision board, I saw it go down in flames at about 300, but I think that was just a stupid admin.

Originally posted by dcdomain
I'm thinking about giving up on phpBB. Had trouble restoring my database, but the main thing is the lack of skins and the fact that they don't have this feature that VB has (password protecting sections).

Does Invision board have that feature? Say a bunch of people sign up for the board, and there's this one section I only want a select few to be able to see, can I just set it up where they are password protected and then give out the password to the group? I hated adding each member to a select group and then giving that group viewing capabilities in phpBB.

But phpBB does have this feature. You have to create a group, put members in that group. Then create a forum that has special permissions on it. That way, the only people who have permission to view or read or post or whatever else you decide have to be in the group you created.

Here's a tutorail from the phpBB website Private Forum Tutorial (http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=10481) . And yes, InvisionBoard has this feature also.