Forum software.. suggestions.. ideas, and opinions?

Hey everyone.. I'm wondering what forum software everyone would recomend to use? I've heard good things about quite a few, and bad things too.. I was thinking about phpBB but I'm not sure.

Does anyone have any opinions on a forum that has ease of use and functionality? What's your favorite? Which one has the best/most features?

Thanks

Invisionboard is the best offering for PHP forum software available. PHPBB is good as long as you don't mind applying security fixes on a regular basis.

Thanks Joe

Invision board is dying now....I keep getting alot of errors. They have known about the error and have not fixed it. I have to keep repairing a table to keep my website up and running.

Which one would you recomend then?

Try UBBThreads out,
I seem to like it better than any other, also it seems faster to me.

http://www.infopop.com/products/ubbthreads/
They have a demo you may download and check out .

there is alot of good free stuff out there.

just checkout devScripts.com and HotScripts

for lists of free BB's

Thanks Ben

Trust me, there is no forum software out today built around php more powerfull or more stable than IPB - The only one that matches in stability is vBulletin. We installed it at a university over here on the universities lan a while ago, over 80K posts and still performing like a beast with absolutely no problems to date with it...

I dont think there is a "better" forum software, it depends which one you like best. There is phpBB, IB and no one mentioned YabbSE. There is vBulletin but that is if you want to pay 130 dollars license.

I myself prefer phpBB because the admin interface is better and there are more hacks and mods for it making it a more "fun" forum. Perhaps IB is more powerful but I doubt many people are going to have 80k posts...

well forums are getting better and better but vBulletin is still the best if you're looking at stability and nr of functions etc But this is only if it's gonna be a board with ALOT of members/visitors and messages, otherwise just use one of those free ones, they're getting better and better aswell. phpBB has got a few bugs but it's alright

phpBB doesnt work well on the free hosts but you probably have ur own server as everyone except me seems to have

and we all pay money for it Do the same and you will have your own server as well If you keep it small it'll be very cheap

yeah next year when I start getting a proper job (ill be 15!) I will save up some cash and buy a new hard drive, is Linux free? because I have a FreeBSD distribution on a cover cd in a magazine but it's version 4.3 which is probably well old. And would I need to keep my pc online 24/7?

Yes.. Linux is free for download... and yes you would need to keep your pc online 24/7 if you want a true server

a server only has to take up like 20mb of space and you don't really need linux if you don't want to....it's a bit buggier with windows but it'll work fine

I downloaded mySQL = 20mb
php = 10mb
apache = 10mb

so it is more than 40mb. could I just do it without all this "extra" hd crap because I would like to see what it's like. I have phpDev setup and it has everything including modPerl (asp doesnt work though but PERL, Mason and some other stuff does) and I know where to get the DNS, I have Tiscali DSL and it is a connection speed of 600k.