Which message board system do you think is better?

So tell us, which messageboard is your favorite? I didn't include IGNBoards because I mean for all aspects of the board: user and administrative sides - a lot of us do not know the administrative side of IGNBoards because...they're not easy to get. Anyway, which do you like the best? Which have you used?

I will have to decide my favorite later on, I do need to think about it. I have used all of them except IPB. Quite frankly, they're all good (with the exception of proboards ).

I can?t speak for all of these since I haven?t used all of them, so I?ll just go with what I have. I?ve used Proboards, Invisionfree, Invision Power Boards and, currently, vBulletin. Each have their merits and downsides. ProBoards, for example, is incredibly user friendly. It?s simple and easy to use. However, that simplicity reduces the options that it has, and it?s essentially just a generic board. I prefer more top of the line things for a professional website, such as http://www.thestarwarsrp.com which is a role-playing website where I am the Head Administrator.

Invisionfree is simple again, but it doesn?t have as many options as Power Boards. I happened to like it, but from what my Technical Administrator tells me it?s not the best for having larger websites such as TheStarWarsRP.Com is. Regardless, the Administrative Control Panel is still something that I found to be simple and I never really had any problems with it, though I also didn?t use much in it.

My favorite so far is vBulletin. I think it?s the most professional looking in terms of the board and also the most professional, effective and efficient when it comes to the Administrative Control Panel. I had more options than I had on Invision and I think it?s a bit easier than Invision so long as you know what you?re doing.

I've tried phpbb and SMF and I've found that phpBB is far superior to SMF, much friendlier to use. phpBB 3 is the best

Figured I'd finally put my word in.

I chose phpBB...more specifically phpBB3. I am really liking this because it is very user friendly, but the main reason is the admin panel. I've never used one like this. I've used vBulletin, but not enough to browse the full capabilities of the admin panel, but I have with phpBB3. It is the best I've seen so far. Also, I am familiar with the layout and such, so it is easily changeable.

When the JC was looking at a possible move back in 2005, we were going to go with vBulletin.

vBulletion doesn't really seem to have the same abilities to hold such a massive board like this, though I could be wrong.

phpBB 3 does

As a member of the Zetaboards/Invisionfree staff, I have to say Zetaboards if you want the best free software.

Prior to using Invisionfree, I used phpbb, ezboard, Invision Power Board, and several others that I can't even recall all of them. Invision Power is great if you want total control of your board. The downside is if you mess up, you are on your own. I learned this the hard way once and it took me almost a year to fix my mistake.

The reason I chose Invisionfree and eventually stayed with it and became staff is because of the great Support given by both members and staff. They are truly knowledgable, helpful and caring. And if you need help with any feature or making a skin, they can help you. I left several board hosts due to poor support.

What I like about Zetaboards is it was designed with common sense. The creators took a lot of commonly used ideas and improved them. The software was designed to grow and there are many great features and plans for great features constantly being made. It also has a special place for me as I watched its development from a bunch of ideas on paper into actual software.

Of course, I'm a firm believer that one software isn't right for everyone. Some do well with IPB, others vBulletin, phpbb, ezboard etc. Zetaboards and Invisionfree were right for me.

Well, I wouldn't say it is the best free software. ZB is the best non-installation forum I would definitely say. But the best free one? Not sure because ZB isn't as customizable as other free forums, like phpBB. ZB is very customizable, don't get me wrong, but not as customizable as phpBB3.

Again, don't get me wrong, I love ZB. I am currently using it. But I just like phpBB3 better.

That was an error on my part. I meant freely hosted. Keeping in mind that phpBB has to be installed somewhere and normally requires a host, where as ZB has all the upgrades done for you.

There are free hosts available that do an auto install of phpBB, where you simply go through a process similar to signing up for ZB or Invisionfree on the Control Panel of the hosting, and the boards get set up that way. In some cases you have to go to a separate place on the control panel to set up a mySQL database, but that's all guided too.

Plus, the best part about hosting your own boards, is that you also have a website host that way. Most free hosting that offers PHP/mySQL offers Domain DNS services, and there is free domain (well, technically a subdomain) services available from a few sites, namely co.cc and FreeDNS. With these, you can usually make subdomains for boards.yourdomain.tld or whatever, to put your boards on, and put the site on the main domain.

Not trying to bash ZB, I'm just trying to say that there is other options for free and easy.

The big issue with some of those sites though (from my own experience) is there is always a catch. Normally if it's an ad or two, it's alright. But some of those pop up, pop under, deletion after inactivity for x amount of time, limits on bandwidth etc.

Eventually, I bought a domain at godaddy for cheap and found a small but affordable hosting deal that provided me what I needed for $10 a month. I did install IPB back when it was free. I think I even tried 2.0 when it was still being done and was beta. But the problem with that was I was on my own if I made a mistake (which I did). The first time, I tried to upgrade from 1.3 to 1.3.1 or something and caused a massive database error which took me months to track down and fix. The next error was with making polls which I never solved before that particular community died and I deleted the software.

My initial point being that hosting your own board is the best solution IF you know what you are doing. If you are a novice or intermediate, a board like zetaboards is great because it can be customized quite a bit (via Jquery, CSS etc.) but if you make a mistake, there's a support team that can go right in and fix it. The other option which I use is the domain control panel that allows me to set up my domains to redirect to the board instead of using the zetaboards address.

But if you are skilled with html, php etc. then yes, a software like vBulletin and phpBB is probably the best.

Yeah, I definitely agree with you, yodaminch. When I started using phpBB several years ago, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. It took me a while to figure out the ropes. Now, I know a lot more, having had experience with phpBB for quite some time.

I prefer Zetaboards.

I use Forumotion to host my clan's forum, very customizable and so far I have no complaints - www.forumotion.com
What I specifically like about it is that it offers an option of changing your forum address whenever you want so if you get tired of one name in URL, you change it and tell your members to update their bookmarks.