A few years ago, the only forum software I ever noticed was vBulletin and phpbb. If you wanted to be taken seriously you picked vBulletin. If you just wanted a forum you went with phpbb and hoped some people would post... I never knew of any forums that used smf. And one forum that ran mybb. And IPB was just something I heard mentioned when people were railing on about vbulletin 4 being so bad back when I bought vbulletin 4. I never visited an IPB forum prior or if I did it was branded free. Now I am seeing a great many Xenforo forums popping up. And I actually know of some IPB forums too. vBulletin has really opened the door by releasing half done software. which forum software do you like the best? I think Xenforo is the forums of the future. unfortunately being an unemployed student means qandq isn't likely to get them any time soon...
I still prefer IPboard over Xenforo....I've been on Xenforo for going on 3 months and I like it for the most part but right now IPboard presently has a lead on Xenforo but Xenforo has the advantage of being more modern and it seems like it is built for the future of forums vs Ipboard. So for me...Free Software would be SMF...I absolutely hate PHPbb(both as a user and a forum owner...I used it briefly when i needed to convert my forum and used phpbb as a path to convert) and mybb is annoying to me. Paid would be an ALMOST tie between IP Board and Xenforo.
I agree the boards that i've been on since finding some with ipb have been nice. I also remember adding mods to phpbb was a horror. vBulletin was a dream for that. Takes note of the smf recommendation in case I need to convert away from vbulletin due to php incompatibility bugs in the future before I can afford something better. why do you find mybb annoying?
I think IPB was the superior choice long before vB4. Popularity doesn't always mean something is good or bad.
Before I started my latest forum, I was only away of phpBB, IPB and vBulletin; having previous experience with vB I decided to go with it, and during my advertising escapades I discovered MyBB and Xenforo. Honestly, I still prefer vB, even if some of the others look more user-friendly.
Well I've tried phpBB once, and it wasn't that good although the themes were quite nice, the software wasn't that good. But then I've switched to myBB, which I think is quite good. It has a clear structure and easy to implent. I've been a lot of vBulletin forums and they are quite organised, but it costs too much for me at the moment.
phpBB is very good if you're just starting out and want a forum; it gets a little bit more complicated when you start wanting to mod it though. One of the things that disappoints me most about it is that it doesn't have user profiles similar to vB.
Personally, I hate IPB. I tried the admin demo, and didn't like it and I hate the front end UI. I felt the same way about xenForo until I started using it and now I really like it and use it on my forum Liam
