[rhender]

I am creating a forum for high end audio enthusiasts. There will be a bunch of different areas just like any other normal forum.

Are all of these options good options – vBulletin, bbpress, phpbb ??

Would one be better than another for some specific reason / reasons?

I just want to make sure I make the best choice as I’m just starting the forum.

Why do you have to pay for vBulletin? Is it really worth paying for?

Thank you,

[Anointed]

It really depends on what you are trying to accomplish with your website. If you are already running wordpress and eventually want to have everything linked together between forums, blog posts, users etc, then bbPress is definitely the way to go.

If your primary focus of the website is forums only then I ‘may’ suggest vbulletin. I have no experience with phpbb, but have run very large vb forums for years now.

As to whether or not it is worth the money, well that’s different for everyone. I personally am going to transfer my larger forums over to bbPress as I much prefer the wordpress environment to vb.

At the moment vb can do a lot more out of the box than just about any other forum software, but I believe that bbPress is going to close this gap very quickly. Vbulletin is really bloated with a ton of features that really are not needed but some people just seem to like all the extra junk.

It really is a personal call. I can say though bbPress is progressing very nicely. It is a very solid foundation that can easily be built upon.