Which free forum software is your favorite?

Everybody's gotta have one of these threads sometime or another.

Make your choice in the poll and feel free to elaborate in a reply

 

Right now, mybb is my favorite free forum software.

I have used phpbb and smf in the past. But I stopped using phpbb because of security issues and stopped using SMF due to a lack of change.

 

For free forums I seem to be mostly on phpBB forums.

I prefer vBulletin forums to the free forums.

-Raymond

 

MyBB is my favorite free script.

PhpBB never appealed to me; I've tried it and for whatever reason, automatically hated it.
SMF isn't so bad, but I am not too fond of its design, and it seems to have less built-in functionality than other scripts.
With MyBB, I cannot find much to complain about. It's design is okay, and it's features aren't bad. Although they could implement quite a bit more, it's enough to please me.

 

MyBB, hands down.

Any forum I run now uses vBulletin. But MyBB is really the best alternative to vBulletin, even over IPB in my opinion. I also like the community there.

 

I had tried SMF in the past, but its plugin system annoys me - sometimes incompatible plugins mess up the PHP files. I've switched to MyBB almost a year ago, and I had been contented since.

 

You are absolutely correct. I still like it though. I am just stubborn I guess. I am newly getting into VB now so lets see.

 

I've always used PHPBB as that is the easiest forum software for me to wrok with. I won't go with any other one at the moment. Maybe when I get more experience with forum owning I'll go for something more advanced... but not now.

 

I believe phpbb is free and is highly recommended on other boards.
Demo : forum hosting

 

Yes, PhpBB is free but I would recommend self-hosting the forum if you're serious about it. I don't think Forumotion gives up the database if you ever decide to switch later on, which means you will have to start from scratch.

 

I think it's obvious that MyBB is my choice, based on my position on the MyBB team. Despite this, I still feel there is little reason for me to think otherwise. SMF is just a mess in general, and phpBB3, though it does look pretty good, is not really as well designed as it first appears.

 

While I primarily use commercial-grade (paid) software, I will say that MyBB is indeed my favorite free script.

 

The first forum I made was using YaBB.

Sticking to my roots :}

 

I used to stand by phpBB religiously, nothing could beat up. Until phpBB 3 came out, which completely disappointed me, so I went on the hunt for other software. I came across vb (but this isn't about paid software :p) and also MyBB. I wasn't too impressed with MyBB, but that all changed upon the release of MyBB 1.4, that all changed

So MyBB is my favourite free forum software.

 

Oh wow! I haven't used that script in years. :speachless:

 

MyBB seems to be the favorite here. I wonder why they don't have a larger community.

 

That's a good question. Look at the strong following that phpBB has. Then again, it has been around a bit longer.

 

I never really understood, either. Almost everywhere I go, MyBB seems to be the alternative-of-choice yet phpBB seems to always be in the lead. I guess PhpBB is the most popular and since a large margin of free-script users are teenagers and kids, they don't take the time to research other solutions; they just use the first one they come across, which apparently is phpBB.

 

And most free create-a-forum-in-5-seconds-or-less sites use phpBB (some Invision). A quick Google search for "create a free forum" will probably give you some form of one of them, not MyBB.

 

And the free forum hosts that are using IPB are using the older, buggy release (due to license restrictions).