whats the best forum script to use in terms of cost and seo

I am thinking about setting up a forum on one of my sites, i have only have some experience with phpbb and installing the seo urls on that script.

I am looking for alternative, i can install yabb via my cpanel but is it any good?

what would you recommend based on your experience?

would prefer free script but can raise a small budget if necessary.

 

Go with SMF (www.simplemachines.org). It is free and feature rich. SMF has build in SEO url-s too.

 

I used YaBB forum for many years and it's not bad...
but I now look for clean code when I select any scripts...

I really like Vanilla forums for that reason.

Good luck

 

I'm switching from vbulletin to SMF soon, I'll post my thoughts here.

I looked into Vanilla, and almost everyone complains about how hard it is to mod that forum. It also doesn't really integrate with any CMS's that I know of.

 

actually Vanilla integrates very very well with WordPress...
here's an example:
http://www.opendesigns.org/

 

thanks for the link - that's good to know! I wish Vanilla were more complex though...I guess that's why they named it Vanilla in the first place.

 

no problem
yes it is a very bare bones style of forum which is why I rather like it. I tend to like uncluttered sites best

 

impressed with the look of SMF so most likley to go that way.

Thanks for all the replies.

 

Minibb is my choice these days for free forum software - easy to set up, easy to skin, easy to integrate, great SEO options and the best thing is that it is not popular and has very few spammers automatically sign up to forums!

 

Anyone have any comments on MyBB?

Rich

 

MyBB is very nice and it can be the right way if you choose to use this software. I tried it some times ago and loved the way how this script works. Very clean Admin CP and frontend too.
After SMF MyBB is my second favorite forum software.

 

Hi olti.

Thanks for the comment. If it isn't too much bother, could you give me a brief idea why you prefer SMF to MyBB. Thanks.

Rich

 

MyBB is brilliant for a free script, and is as good/better then IPB, and is catching up to vB. At the moment though, there is an SEO plugn, though it will be included by default in the next release.

BP

 

I also have to recommend SMF. It has the feature set of a paid software, but it's free. It's very easy to use, the admin panel is nice, and there are plenty of mods for it.