[TypeSK]

ok ... i like vBulletin..obviously, and think its the best in its class ...

BUT, i dont have $150 to dish out for it right now ....

SO, im stuck getting a free version ....

so ive narrowed it down to two, phpBB, and Ikonboard ....

question is, what do you think?

i currently have phpBB2.0.4 installed right now .... its ok i guess...but i lately been going to boards that have Ikonboard ... thought i might want to install it ...

but they dont have a PHP version of it .. which i would like as i use PHP includes in my pages ...

i could just manually input everything into the templates though of the forums ...

but what do you recomment? im thinking im gonna go with Ikonboard though as it has a better control panel for the users .. but i havent seen the admin panel at all, or dont know how easy/hard the templates are to edit (one thing i dont like about vBulletin is that you have to edit the templates via the admin interface... me no likey), and all...

so what you recomment/think?

thanks

[brendandonhu]

As a user, I personally prefer phpBB, but I have no specific issues with Ikonboard. Either would work well, and each user will have different preferences. You may want to go with whichever one is easiest as far as administration.

[Marijuano]

i use phpbb for my site, personally i find that the admin panel and general functionality aren't that great. i've never used ikon board, i dont really like the look of it particularly.
vBulletin actually only costs around $80 i believe.
but if u still dont wanna pay that (and u probly dont unless your site is particularly popular) then stick with phpBB, although i have heard good things about navboard. i believe that uses text files rather than MySQL though.

[TypeSK]

yea, its $80 for a 1 year lease ....

i rather just pay the whole thing for good rather than lease ....

my site is new, so i wanna stick with free...i doubt my site will ever get popular enough to justify the buy for vB though ...

i agree, the admin panel is that great in functionality, neither is the UserCP (like in vB) ...

[gotrootdude]

Have you looked here to see whats available besides phpbb in open source or free for non-commercial use?

http://www.thinkofit.com/webconf/forumsoft.htm