Best free discussion forum software

I'm interested in starting my own discussion forum and wanted to know if anyone has an opinion on discussion forum softwares. My html knowledge is pretty limited so something user friendly would be ideal. That being said I wouldn't want to lose out on functionality for ease of use because I am a quick learner when necessary.

I have heard some good things about SMF. I tried PHPBB several years ago and didn't like it very much. vBulletin is obviously the best option but I don't feel like paying for something that is available for free.

 

have you looked at yabb?

 

phpBB is now at 3.0.x so you will like it for sure(EYE CANDY ). Try SMF as well as it will soon be going to 2.x.

 

I've had a little dabble in these and i've prefered smf in the past. I know quite a few people like and use phpBB, but I found SMF to be more user friendly.

 

PHPBB has a version 3 now which is much improved over the previous version. Plus there are a lot of mods that you can add and lots of themes. I have not run SMF yet, just saw one the other day infact, but it looks pretty nice.

I think you would be fine to start with PHPBB and modify it as you see the need. The new Admin panel is much improved over version 2. It doesn't have near the functionality of VB yet, but it is getting better. I would recommend moving to VB though if you find your forum getting large. It handles larger forums easier.

 

A fountainpen forum I use uses "Fireboard" & "Joomla"
It says "powered by" and the two aformentioned on the site.
Here, at the bottom:
http://community.fountainpen.de/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=100

 

Ive always used phpbb

 

For forums I prefer phpBB, for website building Joomla.

Greg

 

As a former SMF dev team member, I'm contractually bound to recommend SMF whenever this question arises.

 

Which part of the software did you work on? I've never used SMF, so how well is it supported as far as mods for it? Are they easily installed or do you have to do a lot of editing like in PHPBB.

 

LoL!!! Please send me a private message with your real opinion

 

I didn't specialize in a certain area. It has great add-in architecture. There are many user contributed add-ins available, as well as some written by team members. There's always tweaking you can do, but it works great right out of the box. The community forum is a great place for support - you'll get help for any issue that might pop up.

 

I think SMF is the best forum software out there. I've been using it on my website even before I joined the team.

 

+1 on this. The support forum is excellent, had a couple of issues when I was using smf and the help was always there, liked the fact there were a mass of add-ins aswell.

 

So far, SMF seems like the fool proof decision. Will there even be an advantage to upgrading to vB later or do you think SMF is a good long term solution?

 

I have not used SMF, but for handling a large traffic forum VB is hard to beat. I'd love to give SMF a shot on a large forum, but they aren't that easy to just make.

 

No kidding... I can only hope my forum becomes big. I've owned the domain for several years and think it's time to do something with it. It's called BusinessPlayers.com. I had all sorts of ideas for the domain but I think a discussion forum is the most practical one.

 

Well, best of luck to you. I think you have a good domain name especially since it is established. Some people will stray away if they see it is relatively new and figure it might not last long. If you are good and persistent it should take off. I hope one day again to run a very large forum myself. It's a lot of fun.

 

I actually had is up with phpbb a while ago. It was online but it was just a skeleton and I posted a thread telling people it was a work in progress and not to post. The funny thing was, people were messaging me telling me they couldn't wait until the site was up and running.

I could care less about generating revenue from the site and I don't care if it becomes a massive forum. I just want to have intelligent discussions with intelligent people about topics I am interested in. Really, I just want to learn and in turn educate.

 

So everyone is fine with SMF

 

It turns out SMF was an offshoot of yabb...