Whats the best forum CMS?

What is the best forum CMS in your opinion?
I might buy one for my website. I've been working for 2 years now with PHP-Fusion, but the forum is getting to big and too slow.

Any suggestions?
Btw, please vote so I can see what you guys think.

 

1) vBulletin
2) IPB
3) SMF

 

I voted other, and il leave you guessing.

 

free - phpbb
not free - vBulletin

 

I put my vote on vBulletin, if you can afford to pay for the script I don't suggest you to choose differently.

 

vBulletin is by far the best forum software. I've used several of the other available forum softwares and I always end up going back to vBulletin. The support is good and the modding community is always coming out with new plugins.

 

That's very kind of you

@All: thanks, I'm also thinking about vBulletin. I really like it while surfing here on DP.

 

Hi webmasterplace the one ive used so far is MyBB, i like it but im aware that if the cash is available that many love vBulletin, if i had the money i would go for that too, MyBB looks nice to me, plus the forum i needed it for was non webmaster related, so i feel less of a need to appeal to the users with the choice of forum.

 

I'm looking for something relatively idiot proof (while I've been visiting forums for almost ten years, I'm about to create my first), and something that I can change themes on. I would like to be able to change the theme (green with shamrocks for March for St. Patty's Day, etc.).

Will vBulletin do this? I don't mind paying for it, depending on the price.

Thank you.

 

Look at MyBB - if your forum gets large, vBulletin will kill a server which MyBB runs quite comfortably on - so you won't have to pay for the extra server for a while longer.

vBulletin is bloated - there is no doubt about it. The social networking features are the stupidest things they could have added, it over bloats the code (even when turned on) and does not serve any purpose on a forum script.

In fact, I found an article on Uncyclopedia that details my experience with vBulletin to a tee:

.

For me - just the second one

The first one is a slight exaggeration, but yeah - I think I got 23 database errors on a high end VPS in one day with 11 000 users.

The last one about the bloated code are the truest words ever spoken about vBulletin.

Quite true - $160 for a license
$30 a year for updates
Craploads of money on a server to handle it (of course no matter what software you use, you are eventually going to need a powerful server to host forums with more than 40 000 members - so you should save on the rest.

 

Interesting post blueparukia, i had no idea about things like that regarding vBulletin.

 

Hmm, thanks to that post I'm starting to change my mind ...
I'll probably try out some demos and see what it gives.