The Best Forum Software for Your Community

The following blog article was written by: Sabrina Sabino on April 25, 2011.
Last revised by: Sabrina Sabino on July 6, 2011.

There are plenty of forum softwares out there for you to choose from. I personally tried as many as I could before starting my forum community. There are both free and commercial softwares available. It is important to consider your budget, and if you are just starting out, you might want to consider the reputed freewares. Here are several forum softwares I would completely recommend:

Things to Consider:

Price
Features
Web Host Limitations
Forum Languages
Forum Additional Features
Software Flexibility

Free Forum Softwares:

phpBB (Free, Open Source) – phpBB is the most widely used today. There are two stable versions; phpBB2 and phpBB3. phpBB3 was officially released several years ago, but many forums choose not to upgrade for several reasons (e.g. too much of a hassle, fear of losing data, compatibility issues, etc.). phpBB has a wide range of add-on features and styles. If you want to choose a free forum software and you want to have that flexibilty to modify its code then phpBB should probably be your #1 choice. One of the best things about phpBB is that although the admin panel isn’t as ‘lite’ as MyBB, you can stick to very simple and basic features for your members. Most memebers prefer user-friendly and straightforward interfaces. That said, there are so many add-ons available for phpBB, it’s almost too good to be true. phpBB is php-based so you can migrate to the commercial vBulletin if you ever feel the need to do so.
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YaBB (Free, Open Source) – YaBB (or better known as ‘Yet another Bulletin Board’) would be my 2nd choice. They have also come up with an upgraded version: YaBB 2 (latest is YaBB 2.5 at the moment) which was considerably better that its predecessor (YaBB 1). YaBB is perl-based, and requires no database! This is an advantage if you want a small forum or if your hosting plan does not provide the database feature. Well, don’t get me wrong, you can also use YaBB if you have a relatively large community but backup will be crucial (well, just like database forums). I actually chose YaBB for the first-ever forum community I built; and I personally thought it was AWESOME. I was an extreme beginner at the time, and I found it the easiest to customize.
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SMF (Free, Open Source) – SMF (Simple Machines Forum) takes 3rd place for free softwares in my books. I generally like it the least, because I don’t like its admin panel. But I must admit, it is an easy forum software to work out. I’m not a big fan of its current user cPanel either. If your forum is teen-oriented, I would advise you to go for something else. If it’s adult-oriented or it is catered for people who aren’t into showing off signatures and profile design then this is definitely a freeware to consider. I have been a member of an SMF forum for several years now. Kudos to the guy who maintains it. It is stable and nobody has ever hacked into my account or anything. It is also very simple to use, although you might want to steer clear from having too many childboards. The forum gets a lot of bot sign-ups though, which is a “turn off” and I remember installing it twice on my servers on two separate occasions – and both times I had issues where a member never received their confirmation email (not in the junk folder, or anything). This forum software also has a very traditional feel to it, nothing web 2.0-like.
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MyBB (Free, Open Source) – MyBB is a ‘pretty’ forum and is very ‘lite’. It is considered to be the “free vBulletin”. It was my first choice when I started a simple forum (I chose MyBB over Vanilla). But why have I ranked it #4? Well, it’s simple. It is unreliable in terms of stability. On two occasions, it has failed me. It offers a lot of easy integration methods with other softwares. The first time it failed me, I integrated it with OS Date. It worked perfectly until one day…when out of the blue nothing was working. I couldn’t even enter the admin panel. I can’t remember the error it was giving me, but it wasn’t even integration-related. It just failed. The second time, I never integrated it with anything. I didn’t even install an additional feature; nor did I install a custom theme. It was using its default theme, and all its settings were at default. One of my members started complaining about not being able to login. Then one day, so suddenly, I couldn’t access the forum anymore. Call me old fashioned but I would rather go with a forum software that I can leave for a few minutes, come back and find it still working perfectly.
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Vanilla (Free, Open Source) – Vanilla would be my last choice if I were to go for an open source freeware. I didn’t find it too SEO-friendly, and at the time I thought it was too lite. That was several years ago though, and they were developing really quickly. They already had quite a number of add-ons as well. Apart from the SEO thing, it’s a great software if you are looking for something extremely lite.
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Discuz (Free) – I don’t know about Discuz being open source but I do know it is available for free. Discuz is a forum software offered by a Chinese company called Comsenz. I must admit, the software gets me excited. If you are quite good at PHP, okay at understanding Mandarin, and you want a forum that is unique in the English world then Discuz is the way to go. This forum is fabulous. It’s so retro…so web 2.0 meets Perez Hilton. It’s got all kinds of features like point system, member levels, shopping cart, credits, etc. which is available on most free forum softwares as add-ons. This forum software has a ‘fresh’ feel to it; I can’t even explain it…it just turns me on, basically. This would not be my last choice, but this is one that I have tried briefly. I was able to install this with no problem, everything seemed to be working fine…but then my “biz partner” decided to drop the whole forum idea so we never got to build a community on Discuz.
- Download [English] [Mandarin] -

There are many more forum freewares out there that are worth checking out, e.g. FluxBB, Phorum, YAF, PunBB, and well, a whole lot of other ‘BBs’.

Commercial Forum Softwares

vBulletin – The best out there today has got to be vBulletin. It is top-notch. Although, like every other software today; when a security release comes out you really have to install it as soon as possible…unless you want something really horrible to happen, e.g. your site getting hacked (my site got hacked). Worst of all, I couldn’t understand this hack because I reloaded a template backup (templates are usually hacked before anything else) and the site was still hacked. I reloaded a previous bakup but it was still showing my colonized page. Could it have been a database hack? Now that’s a scary thought. Because that was the only thing I didn’t reload. My domain was still in my possession, and the source code seemed alright so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an iframe issue or my domain name. Big mystery…the site was doing pretty well in terms of automated income, but to this date I haven’t been able to re-upload it to my servers because it is EXTREME in filesize, database size, and with the internet speeds here in Seychelles you really are fighting a losing battle. Long story. vBulletin is the ultimate forum solution. Plus now they’ve upgraded it to some sort of social networking site so you really might want to check that out. I bought my license for about $160 years ago. An upgrade to the classic software version costs $175. A new license of the 4.0 Publishing Suite costs $285. You might not want to start with that; especially if you don’t know what SEO means. Nevertheless, if you still want to go for it, remember that many vBulletin owners tend to resell their licenses at webmaster communities online. Get the license verified before you make payment. The biggest disadvantage of vBulletin has to be its price…you actually have to pay for security releases even if you’ve opted for a lifetime license. This really sucks. Now you know why my forum software got hacked into.

IPB – IPB (Invision Power Board) is pretty good too. It costs $149.99 and it really has this ‘stable’ feel to it. Although I am a member of one forum that uses IPB, I wouldn’t necessarily choose it over the free forum softwares. Go with IPB if you don’t want a free software (for whatever reason) and you don’t want to buy vBulletin.