Comments on: Need Forum Software Recommendations

By: nemoforone

nemoforone — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 10:03:05 +0000

What about the possibility of pulling out of Iraq, letting Iran invade and lose resources fighting their own kind,
and then come in and mop up the dregs?

By: sjk

sjk — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 03:31:23 +0000

A few latecomer observations/opinions:

â€¢ punBB and Vanilla seem to lack some basic functionality, like next/previous topic links, so usability doesn't scale well.
â€¢ phpBB posts/threads don't format well as plain or rich text (e.g. for basic archival in DEVONthink, et.al.); haven't checked that with punBB and Vanilla.
â€¢ phpBB automatically marks unread posts as read between sessions; not sure about punBB and Vanilla.

From a user perspective vBulletin has a combination of features and usability I like and appreciate, but you pay the price in $$$ and unneeded capabilities. SMF has fewerÂ shortcomings that annoy me with phpBB but its not without quirks.

I don't have administrative experience with any of them.

By: Antony Shen

Antony Shen — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 21:54:03 +0000

I've been using phpBB for year, and loving it. If you are looking for a simply forum software, punBB is a good choice.

By: Johan Svensson

Johan Svensson — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 12:32:30 +0000

I'm a big fan of punBB, so another vote for it.

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 08:39:32 +0000

I've had a lot of luck with Vanilla. Sweet and simple.

By: Erik J. Barzeski

Erik J. Barzeski — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:26:19 +0000

It occurs to me that, while something like "Vanilla" looks nice in theory, the simple fact that it is unlikely to let me export my data in a fashion that could be easily imported later is a major turn-off.

By: Tino

Tino — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:19:55 +0000

I have used phpBB in the past and I liked it, but it seems to be the target of A LOT of spam bots these days. And mabye that is the case with all of the forums now but I had real trouble finding a way to keep the spambots out without serious manual intervention. I've heard a lot of buzz on PunBB myself, seems to be popular. I'll be watching here to see what you decide on. Good luck!

By: Mike Zornek

Mike Zornek — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 22:49:26 +0000

I use PunBB for my company website and it's worked well over the last 45 days since product launch. No complaints. I'm the same way -- I wanted it to be very simple.

http://forums.clickablebliss.com/

By: Martin Gordon

Martin Gordon — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:52:10 +0000

I've ran phpBB before and it did everything I needed. If you're expecting anything close to the Wordpress plugin system's ease of use, be warned: it is terrible. I hope you enjoy following find/replace instructions on multiple PHP files.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:41:38 +0000

I had this problem a while back and I almost went to the point of building a nice, light forums package, then realised I was ridiculously underqualified so I went back to complaining about the existing solutions. I've got no real suggestions for you, but having used YaBB (a perl solution, back in the day), phpBB and having trialled a bunch of others, it's all going to be too bloated, or too simple.