As the topic says what do you think is the best forum software out there?

I would have to say Invision Power Board, not just because RPGCrisis uses it but because to me its the most supported and widely used. I've been around IPB snice its free days back in the 1.1.2 days and I loved it, the forum design was simple yet effective and people were making mods and skins to make your time on any IPB forum more enjoyable.

Now that were at IPB 2.1.5 a lot of changes have happend, some that were bad but a lot that have been good. Some of the bad things and a constint complaint from a lot of people is the major difference between the 1.3 series, 2.0.x series and the 2.1.x series. I hated the fact that mods made for the 1.3 series and 2.0.x series couldint be used on the 2.1.x series and vicea versa, a lot of good mods were lost because the original authors left and no one has permission to update them so someone has to make the same extact mod from scratch just to make it work on the new series. Another major thing is the skin changes making it impossible for older skins to work unless you are willing to dish out some serious cash for a pro skinner to upgrade it for you.

Even though there have been some bad changes there have been enough good changes to overcome these changes. I for one love the new look and design of the Admin ACP, everything is more organized and just looks much better. Everything is divided up into sections so you dont have to go hunting for a certain setting. Plus you can even search for settings or settings containg for example "Topic Views" and it will show every setting that has something to do with "Topic Views". Another thing I like that some may not is the fact IPS (Invision Power Services) started charging money for the new version, why you ask? Because they made a support forum called "IPSBeyond" that only allows customers in, so you dont get the people with the old boards or nulled versions, plus the staff and community are all very nice and have helped me with problems I have had. Also you can e-mail IPS and request an IPS Tech. to help you with a problem and they will fix it for free because you have a license with them.

In the past i've tried just about everyother forum and none of them really filled my needs like IPB has, but I would like to hear what everyone else has to say so please respond.

Also put some thought and time into your post, no one-liners or they will get deleted, this is after all the "Mature Discussion" section so thought and time should be put in to your posts making them quite long.

I must say that IPB is an awesome forum software. I honestly like PHPBB because it is free and you can have some pretty neat looking forums if you put the work into it...and the skinning is much simpler, mind you. However, as far as modding goes, IPB has been the simpler one so far. Building the CMS for this site from ground up using a few of the IPBSDK functions is proving to be alot simpler than I originally thought it would be, which is nice, because I honestly don't have as much time left in the world like I used to have with my baby and my girlfriend being back home, not to mention starting school back up. Sure, I'm still having to develop my own scripts to use on the site to display different things or gather different things, but I still use some of the IPBSDK functions to gather a small percentage of information from the forum so that I can make it work well.

I'll agree with EC that IPB is best...as long as you have your own hosting to use, and not the free forum hosts lol.

I think that phpBB is the better. Why? Because it is free, open source, esay-modificable, many MODs, many themes and good security.
SMF is also good, but many of skins are not good, and it's not good for MODs.
IPB is the most used, but I don't think it's better. Maybe because it's paid and too hard to administrate. Then, phpBB is my choice

IPB, well I'm kind of an IPB person. I've learned how to do alot with the forum software (even though I forgot some of what to do, I could always go back to the source nd learn it again). It's a good software, ad isn't always paid for, not unless you get the 2.0+ versions. 1.3 was free, so I'll stick with that.

Inivison...Because it has a better interface, better support, better mods, etc. Apart from that...myBB is quite good. But i don't like phpBB much simply because it lacks native support for subforums.

I like IPB becasuse it is simply user-friendly. The others are difficult to customize thus not many good 3rd-party modules/modifications are availabnle for the other software.