Best free forum software?
 

Yes, I'm aware that vBulletin is the dog's bollocks of forum software but to be honest, I just cannot justify the cost of it so what is the best free forum software out there now? Is it still SMF or is there a new boy on the block?

Cheers.

I've used Simple Machine in the past, it was OK, not usre if it's still free. Make sure you add some weird custom captcha or prepare for a flood of spam.

discourse.org

you can check mybb.com along with SMF. I wouldnt bother using free forum script its just a matter of time until getting banned from the official support sites when they will see your adult forum meaning no more support.
vbulletin 3.x is about 40 $.

cheers, I've used SMF in the past so have an idea on how to run it (I even managed to keep spammers away) but the back end is rather "clunky" for my liking.
Is vBulletin 3.X still available to buy, I did a search and the oldest version I could find still for sale from Vbulletin was 4.X which seems to be the same price as 5.X

Yeah, and is pretty good but the spam filters are shit. I couldn't control it in my site.

Phpbb is probably the best free script. The latest version of vbulletin is crap. Check out xenforo. It's cheap and really good. I've moved the two forums I run from vbulletin to xenforo and couldn't be happier.

I've used both SMF & phpbb and both seem to work just fine.

Hi
Yep, vb 3.X is still available to buy:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=145
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=146
myself bought a 3.x licence last month from webhostingtalk forum with 40 bucks. Expect for vb 4.x around 100$.

Do not buy vBulletin, it's a piece of shit. The free scripts are better and the vBulletin supports sucks too!

I use http://www.invisionpower.com/

Forget "free"
The time you spend cleaning and patching is wasted time. Buy a faster and stable system that works, and dont spend time on the free wersions, unless its a small site, you dont expect to profit from(and then, why build it? :-)

I tested almost everything, I like Vanilla Forums a lot :)

Agreed, phpBB gets it done.

MyBB and SMF is great.... Like I said, vBulletin is just a waste of money.

I have not tried the new version of PHPBB but heard good thing about it.

Yes, SMF still works pretty fine for me.

Vb sucks monkey balls

:2 cents: :2 cents: over 500k member sites

free? my vote for phpbb