recommend a board?

I use vBulletin for my board. vB3 is great! Though I'm very much looking forward to IPB2 -- I might even like it enough to convert

Never liked phpBB, feels hollow or something...

i like phpbb because of the community, and unlike mh, the template style

you can insert regular html code anywhere on the site with ease, it's a good system

I vote for IPB!!

I vote for phpBB - it rocks

i don't think invision board is free anymore... so i guess that leaves us phpBB

DJ

phpbb is awesome
it is easy to install and comes with an easy mod installer to automatically instal TONS of mods... eer well u still need to troubleshoot..

they have wicked support and tons of affiliate sites..

sweet

Cost was a determining factor for me, yes. Disregarding cost, I think I'd still prefer phpBB because, as Mark says, it's gained ground on vB. I don't see what the attraction is with vB anymore.

phpbb is the best. Its free and has more mods than any of the other. With the mods included it has 10x the features the others do. And best of all its FREE!

Way back when... Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB) was *the* board of choice. But because it was written in perl with a flat file backend, it couldn't handle the load of larger sites.

vBulletin came onto the scene, and became *the* board of choice. It offered a MySQL backend, which could handle the load of the larger sites. Over time, vBulletin also offered the most features of any availalbe board. Which is the reason I've opted for vB to this day.

Because both UBB and vB were not free, individuals (Invision Power Board) and communities (phpBB) began free bulletin board software. As these projects have matured, they continue to gain ground on vBulletin's feature list, stability, and security. I think now it's a matter of personal opinion as to which board software is the best solution.

I prefer IPB over phpBB because (IIRC) phpBB has it's templates in files rather than in the database. Besides that, I don't know much different about the two.

I've never paid for a forum. I've compared features between the costly ones and the freebies and found that the free ones often have all of the features of the costly ones AND a large community of developers backing them.

thanks for the comments so far... quick question then: for those who preferred invision or php, do you like those better than, say, a paid for like vbulletin? or was the price, or lack thereof, the determining factor?

a while ago (not really, but say almost two years ago), i set up an ikonboard forum. wasn't too hard, didn't see any major issues, but i didn't like how avatars and/or grafx couldn't b uploaded directly from the client. (i.e., the grafx had to be on a server somewhere with a link/reference)

has anyone set up vbulletin and one of the freebies, and if so, what is your opinion?

thx.

I have always had excellent luck with invision. I think it may only be available in php/MySQL but I could be wrong. There are invision forums where guys will custom skin the boards for you for like 20 bucks; which isnt a big deal since the software is free anyways.

I am a moderator at a board that uses IdealBB (which the IdealBB isnt free) and they seem to have more problems with patch updates, etc.then I ever saw on the invision board.

I think ultimately you would be offered more support on a software package you paid for rather then searching for help in a tech forum of the free software.

I prefer phpBB as well. It's a little bloated and clunky, but I can live with it. It's reasonably extensible with all those hacks and mods, as Andy suggests. But, from experience, I'm more intimate with its inner workings, so would most likely tend to it anyway. IBF would certainly be my second choice.

If you can spare the time and energy, experiment a with a couple of the free options. See if they provide all you want or need, and try to get used to them a little.

I like PHPBB and it has a massive community and loads of mods/hacks and themes available.

vBulletin is the best of the bunch that charges. Invision Board is the best free one.