Best free forum software

[Skyline GTR 1388]

Hey I want to know what does everyone think the best forum software is? I have IPB 1.3.1 final on my site but I want to know if there is anything better that is for free. Thanks

[chaganlal1]

I like PhpBB but I also do like IPB's secutiry features. The best Free one would be SMF or PhpBB.

[MicrotechXP]

I use IPB as you can see from my site. I like it a lot! ;)

[Spartan Erik]

IPB is very good.. i think its probably the most commonly used too

[Flashgear]

spartan, vB is the most commonly used. heheh

i dont like smfs layout, phpbb is ok, but there are plenty of free forum software that you have never heard off but are good.

[Torch]

Not so popular but very good free forums are XMB, WBBLite, Bm Forum and IceBB.

But in my opinion THE best free forum is SMF. It has almost all features that costly vB and IPB have, it's very secure, easily modifiable, and only free forum so far that has some AJAX goodness implemented by default

[Flashgear]

i browsed a smf board and i didnt really like it.

@ torch, im in your sigj lol :drool:

[Torch]

i browsed a smf board and i didnt really like it.

Well, that's your opinion.

But when I'm trying out a forum, I don't judge it by looks and feel at all, only and just by features and functionality. Because template is the thing that can be easly customized to anything you wish, but code that drives forum requires much, much more time and brainwork.

[scylla]

I like phpbbfm

[noerrorsfound]

Personally I don't think SMF looks too bad: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/

And if you don't like that then there's still plenty of skins to change the look. People who didn't like the old default style of the 1.0.x series usually like the new one of the 1.1 RC2 version.

SMF beats phpBB in security and features. Right now, it's even better than phpBB 3 (Olympus)

Although PunBB is a good, basic forum that doesn't use up a lot of resources, and renders XHTML 1.0 Strict valid pages quickly with a low amount of queries. It's fast loading, and only comes with the bare minimum features but there are a lot of mods for it.