I just started a new website. http://www.InternationalDiscussionForums.net.

 

It's a site for people of all sorts to talk of things of all sorts.

 

I'm looking for the best forum software available, commercial anyhow. Because from the looks of it, free software does not give me the functionability of a commercial message board like IPB or Vbulletin.

 

Please tell me which one you think is the best one, why, and why the latter isn't.

 

Thanks, your help is really appreciated.

It's just my opinion based on what I've used (yeah I've used the others, not extensively, but I've seen them)... I cannot say from any other view than the fact that as a non-admin member of a forum I like the way vB is.

 

Personal preference without statistcal or proper reasearched reasoning.

I'd say IPB, simply because while they may add features, they don't go bonkers over it and add every little stupid thing like vBulletin does. AJAX, for example -- vBulletin put piles of it in, but IPB's implementation looks quite nice.

VBB, it's expencive but worth it.

 

I've had some experiance with UBB classic and frankly would advise people to avoid it like the plague...

 

SMF have been growing on me recently although they are free.

What IS ajax?

I don't remember the acronym, but I do remember that it essentially allows you to use JavaScript to get a page without actually reloading the page. If you have gmail, you've seen it. All it does in IPB is allow you to do things like edit your post without leaving the thread view, moderators to edit thread titles without leaving forum view, etc. It doesn't force you to reload the page.

What IS ajax?

 

The original goal of AJAX was to allow you to make HTTP requests in JavaScript. The term is now horribly colluded with a slew of other technologies which allow you to dynamically interact with servers and modify contents of web pages without reloading the page. Modifying the page dynamically is actually a technology called DHTML, but nobody seems to care about that anymore.

 

The term stands for "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML" iirc...

I wonder if he still cares four years later.

Omai. I missed the Necromancy.

Necromancy can be good. () For example, this...

 

SMF have been growing on me recently although they are free.

So how much did SMF grow on you four years later?