Forum - Can't Decide

[kaos]

Hey Everyone...

I've thought about this for a while, but still cant decide. what foum sofware should i use? the three i've come up with are:

-SMF (http://www.simplemachines.org/)
-phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com/)
-vBulletin (http://www.vbulletin.com/)

which should i use?

if you know any others, please tell.

[JShor]

IMO, phpBB has more support, better documentation, easier to customize, etc.
vBulletin is payware, probably not the best choice if you're on a budget, but it's pretty good.
Simple machines is also pretty good, but a little more complex than phpBB [altho in actuality, it may very well have fewer bugs than phpBB].

[traq]

^agreed. phpBB has been around the block, as it were. I'd never heard of SMF before, but it looks like a good package.

[forum_amnesiac]

I've always liked E-Blah, it's free, has an excellent forum and good support.

http://www.eblah.com/

[djr33]

I don't like phpBB for some reason... just seems like more than I want to deal with.

SMF is nice, though with less support/fewer features than phpBB beyond the basics (and a bit more).

This forum (Dynamic Drive) is vBulletin, and clearly it works fine. But as above, it's expensive-- if you've got the money, go for it.

I'd recommend phpBB for a default setup (bare minimum), SMF for something a bit easier to deal with if you want to spend a little more time customizing, phpBB if you want to spend a LOT of time customizing, and vBulletin if you want to spend a couple hundred dollars.