Preferred forum software?

[Business Brian]

My first ever was a YaBB SP Gold 1.1
 
It was a great piece of sopftware - easy to use. After I wandered out from MSN, the first forum I joined was a YaBB SP, so I got to see how it functioned.
 
Then, one day, I found the forum disintegrating - I FTP'ed into my server, only to see forum files disappearing. I never really knew what happened, but it was put down to a server error. Either way, in the 30 minutes or so I watched my forum collapse before my eyes, I immediately when for the memberlist and saved it - member IDs, passwords, and e-mail addresses.
 
The next forum I ran was a YaBB SE. A bit trickier at first, but beautiful once running. I swear it's the simplest forum software I've ever used. Funnily enough, the forum that inspired me to use SP Gold had also recently converted to YaBB SE as well. The first thing I did was to manually add the log-in details of all 150 members of the previous disintegrated Gold.
 
The SuperMod project that came out of YaBB SE in 2003 was also a great piece of software. After some verbal fisticuffs with YaBB SE developers and coders, the project finally went ahead and really specialised in its own way, though they had to rewrite a lot of the Mods because of bad blood with the Mod developers.
 
YaBB SE had great support, and an excellent starter forum, but had serious issues with indexing. I actually ending up half-offending the owner and lead-developer by telling them their project would die unless they catered for search engine spiders.

[flash32]

Since you seem to have a lot of experance in Forums I was wondering if you would take a look at my Forums (below) and tell me what you think about them.  If they have enough topics, the right topics or should I add more topics.  I would be very interested in your opinion.  Thanks  Flash32

[Business Brian]

Hi flash32 - and welcome to business-talk.
 
Apologies - the forums here are not actually properly open as yet, but you're still welcome to hang around.
 
One problem with new forums is starting them off - I've got a couple of weeks before the official February 1st launch to build up some topics, and invite some personal freinds to help create an initial impetus.
 
New forums will often take a while to grow - they simply require persistance and time to develop, with plenty of pushing by the admin and any staff involved.
 
Your own forums could do with some customisation, to help make them appear moer unique and inviting - and also note that you should be careful about opening up too many boards. I still have some to fill here, but I do actually have some content already typed up for them. And, over the next few weeks I can add even more topics from various other forums I visit.
 
A word to the wise, though - pushing one forum to success in itself can be a very hard and exhausting task - you may find two a little overwhelming. I know I have in the past, when doing the same.
 
Anyway - good luck to you.

[JohnScott]

phpBB
 
Briam, this forum is hard to see. I need more contrast.

[Business Brian]

A proper custom skin is certainly something I'll be looking into once the vB 3 Gold release is out - and when the skin support is there.

[altyfc]

My preferred software is definitely phpBB.
 
What I particularly like about is that the homepage (on the default version at least) has a 'view your threads' option which I find particularly useful for keeping track of where I last posted.  Is that kind of link available here?
 
Aaron

[Business Brian]

I'm not quite sure - this is actually a beta version of vBulletin 3 - I'm sure I've similar similar hacked into other vB3's, though. Once everything has settled into vB 3 Gold I can then look to work no the proper modifications for this site.
 
phpbb is certainly different - I'm trying that now on my britecorp support forum. It's not so easy at all to customise the layout template, though - not without a seeming wider knowledge of php.

[becki]

I like this one. I don't know any others though!

[Business Brian]

I finally understand what John meant about "contrast". Methinks a new design concept is required here.

[Gabriel]

Everyone likes different things from their software. YABBSE was always pretty simple and easy to use, and phpbb and Inivision are useful as well. Of course you pay for support with vbulletin. It's just a case of what features do you need and want?All are useful in some way for difference people hence why there are so many different forum software types out there.