Which forum script to use
Forums are good. I'm not going to turn this article into a propaganda article about why forums are cool because you've probably had that rammed down your throat already. Instead I almost believe the opposite. Forums only work if you have an active community ready to post and get it started. Otherwise it's a dead waste.

But let's presume that you do have an active community of people who hang around on your site and you are ready to add a discussion forum to the site. Which script is the best? There are a lot out there and I have played around with most so I'm going to cover plenty of them here.

phpBB
This is a great script – it's probably the most used forum script on the planet. It has plenty of features, most people are familiar with it and it is easy to integrate into your site's design. On the down side it's generic – everyone else is using it too (although there are plenty of skins) and also as it's so popular people are always exploiting it and uncovering security holes so you need to upgrade a lot.

vBulletin
This script is even better – but it costs. A licence for a year is $80 and a licence to use it forever (which is much better as you can still get support and upgrades after the first year for $30, much better then paying out $80 every year) is $160. It's not cheap and generally us fansite webmaster aren't exactly loaded nor making income to pay for it. If you can afford it though, vBulletin is the best.

Invision Power Board
Another fairly popular script, IPB 2.x costs though, it's cheaper than vBulletin at around $70 for a forever type licence and some people really like it but I'm not a huge fan. You can also get version 1 for free but it's pretty dated now. It's a good script but hard to customise and just a little messy.

Ikonboard
An old school script, Ikonboard is CGI rather than PHP and uses flat files rather than MySQL (though it has MySQL support so it's your choice) so you don't even have to have a database although you do need a cgi-bin. It has plenty of features and you can customise the header and footer easy enough but the rest is hard to customise and it's pretty fiddly to use.

YaBB
Yet Another Bulletin Board is a popular script but personally I think it sucks. The features are not what you would expect from a modern bulletin board and even with the release of the new version 2 it is lacking behind its competition.

SMF
Simple Machines and their forum script is a spin-off from YaBB brought up to date. It uses MySQL rather than flat files and is actually good. It has a weird skin which can be customised with enough effort (not as easy as other boards) and features a plenty. Also upgrades are fantastic – you can just enter your FTP details into the admin panel and it patches all the files for you!

XMB
Not very well known but it's a pretty good forum. The layout is a bit dated but it has most of the features you would expect. It's kind of like Ikonboard – if the ideas could be brought a bit more up to date it would be a real heavyweight.

Community Server
Also known as community forums, this is an ASP.net script which requires either MS SQL or MSDE which means you will need a Windows host with some serious database to run it. It doesn't seem a bad script but when I tried it every time I tried to post I got an error. Not the greatest start.

Snitz
ASP script that will work with loads of databases including MySQL and MS Access (you don't actually need any database; you can just use the included Access one so all you really need is a Windows host). It's lacking some core features like private messaging and moderators need to enter their password to lock or delete anything which is a little annoying but it powers my most active forum and I'm happy with it.

Web Wiz Forums
One of the few popular scripts that I haven't used; this is Snitz's main competition in terms of ASP scripts and indeed gets great write-ups. It has some key advantages over Snitz, one being skins (Snitz doesn't have them although you can customise all the CSS which is colours, font, etc).

Ultimate Bulletin Board
UBB as its known comes in two flavours, UBB Classic which nobody uses ;) and UBB Threads which is the good one. It's an expensive solution though, as the licensing starts at $230 and goes up steeply. Anything that expensive is going to be damn good though ;).

Others
Some other ones you may want to consider are PunBB which is a really fast and lightweight script, Zorum which is quite a nice simple forum and Phorum which is a basic but reliable and battle tested script.

Conclusion
There is no out and out winner but I would say you can't go wrong with vBulletin or phpBB. SMF, IPB, Ikonboard, Snitz just to single a few out of the list are great scripts too though and I like the differences as it means every site isn't running the same generic script. Have a play around with the ones you think look the best and see which ones you prefer.

Posting
This article was posted by mworld.

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