In my opinion vbulletin is the best by far but of course it costs, phpbb is the next best thing, it's admin panel is a lot more user friendly than the one in vbulletin but it's nowhere near as powerful.
I'd personally recommend SMF, the interface isn't as bloated as most other forums, and SMF has a good track record of keeping their code very secure and well written.
I would consider checking out many of them. some offer test runs like WowUltra and many others so you can see exactly how everything works. But regardless you should try out as many as possible and compare features.
what happens if someone use vbulletin forum in his/her website without purchasing a license for it?
by the way, i installed smf on my website to try, but it's too slow..
you can check it : http://www.eslreader.com/forum
Is it slow because of smf forum or my hosting?
You always need to input a license key when installing vBulletin.
However, hypothetically speaking (with no personal experience of this!) there are 'nulled' versions floating about.
Trust me, having a license makes things 100x easier because there's one particular site which is full of addons and templates which requires a valid key for you to join.
ive used phpbb before and had no complaints with it. It was decent. Load time was good. and it was easy to set up. Although I do not have experience with the others listed above
In my opinion vbulletin is the best by far but of course it costs, phpbb is the next best thing, it's admin panel is a lot more user friendly than the one in vbulletin but it's nowhere near as powerful.
--Stream
I'm unfamiliar with vBulletin's administrative capabilities, though no stranger to phpBB3's
What would you say a few of the key differences would be?
Can't wait until some template junkies start developing some more awesome templates. I'm not yet familiar, or dedicated enough with it's sourcecode to completely alter it's design.
