What do you recommend by way of forum software?

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Nathan

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Someone comes up to you and says hey I'm going to start a forum on X. What forum software do you recommend?

I used to use phpBB once but since I discovered vbulletin a little while back, I would never look at another forum software package again.

What do you recommend?
 


I guess it'll depend on their budget, but if they can spend the money for a license I'm guessing the most popular answer here is going to be VBulletin.
 
The leased license for VB is actually pretty reasonable. The owned license is a pricey especially if you are starting out.

I know that SMF is growing in popularity for free forums. Especially since phpBB had that serious security problem a little while back
 
What is the difference between leased and owned? Why would anyone ever buy the leased license?
 
Leased and owned. Well leased is you lease the license from Jelsoft (the makers) for 12 months. You get all updates and patches during that 12 months for free. At the end of the 12 months you have to renew the lease. If you don't your forum stops working.

Owned is you own the license out right. You get access to updates and patches for 12 months but the license for the actual forum software never expires. However after 12 months you wont have access to updates any more s you will need to buy an maintenance pack if you want some updates down the track. If you dont want any updates though then you buy it once and it's yours for life
 
How much are the maintenance packs?

I guess leased might be a good option if you're not sure you can make the forum successful ...
 
Yeah thats why I bought my leased one. That and the fact there is a quite a big price difference.

The updates pack is $30 for 12 months. Not too bad really.

Leased is $85 / year and Owned is $165 one off
 
There was a major security problem with phpBB a little while back. A lot of people ended up with hacked web sites through a phpBB exploit. It lost a lot of users after that. The problem is gone now, but I guess mud sticks
 
Yeah it does, I've heard that it has security problems, and I barely know anything about forum software.
 
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