What forum software is the easiest to work with?

[Blu3Blissey]

And cheapest for that matter!!

My friend is starting up a forum and he is undecided on which one to use. Looking to get some advice to help him decide. I am leaning toward XenForo myself.

 

[PSpringz]

It depends on what your forum is going to be about. I would say any is fine for a basic forum but you want to look more into plugins than anything to see what you will need.

 

[JewishPoptart89]

Phpbb is easy, Wordpress is easy, and xenforo is easy too. It's mostly personal preference.
Look at your free options first, than look at the paid.
If the free can do all you need, it's better to save your money on for your community.

 

[Blu3Blissey]

It depends on what your forum is going to be about. I would say any is fine for a basic forum but you want to look more into plugins than anything to see what you will need.

This is true, I didn't think of plugins or things like that.. oopsies haha

 

[Blu3Blissey]

Phpbb is easy, Wordpress is easy, and xenforo is easy too. It's mostly personal preference.
Look at your free options first, than look at the paid.
If the free can do all you need, it's better to save your money on for your community.

I will look over all three of these. I know this one is Xenforo and I do like the look and feel of it. Wordpress may be a good options since I do have a blog on there!

 

[PSpringz]

This is true, I didn't think of plugins or things like that.. oopsies haha

Just figure out what options you would like to have for yourself and your members and go from there.

 

[jyy]

Of the ones where you host it yourself, I'd say any premium software is the best - simply cause they have many things already included. However, though, for stuff where you're not hosting it yourself, I cannot really say what's the best. It's because I haven't messed around with it - aside from being a visitor.

 

[simonweb]

There is a learning curve for all forum softwares, especially if you want to customize it.

There are many free forums that are easy to install and manage, phpBB is one of those. Many web hosts offer automatic installations and even updates for your forum, so that part should be no problem. The difficult part is to manage, edit and fix potential bugs and errors - it's free software after all so support will be very limited.

Then you have a few premium forum software or premium hosted forum solutions that you could also choose to go with. They offer support if something isn't working and will even help you install and update your forum - but you must pay for this support.

If you decide to go with a premium forum solution, you generally have two options: self-hosting (which is generally cheaper but more complicated to install and manage) or using a premium forum hosting provider (they will install and upgrade the forum for you). IPS offers both these alternatives. IPS might be expensive, but it's a really good and modern forum software, and it has the best ACP imo which makes the forum simple to manage as an admin. You can try one of their demos if you are interested.

 

[jyy]

If you're a beginner (and want free), then hands down, SMF and bbPress (WordPress) would be the easiest. It's because they both have theme and mod uploaders, as well as one-click updaters. However, though, the definition of easy changes once a webmaster is more experienced. In that case, I wouldn't blame them for saying MyBB or phpBB is easy.

 

[Empire]

I say it comes down to each person. Like I mention from another topics comes down to who used it more to who can find it easy to code.

Like some like thins and that other's not. But also depends if you have the money for paid or stick with free. Be cold to able to do code to make plugins and then sell your plugins if it was for an paid forum software

 

[jyy]

To be honest, the help from support forums is good, but often it isn't good enough. For instance, I wanted to make my window redirect upon clicking a MyAlerts button (MyBB) for so long (as my login stuff does), but it's been impossible - even with premium support. In that case, some self-learning will be needed and/or paying a freelancer.

 

[Nomad]

The easiest way to create a forum is wordpress plugin. Even someone with zero experience will be able to set up a forum within 30 minutes. However, forums on wordpress look pretty basic. SMF is the best option among open source