vBulletin Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd: Forum Hosting software

[shuttleworthwannabe]

I am trying to host a forum for user support at our University. I see Ubuntu is using vBulletin (that is not OSS). Is there an OSS equivalent of this? or is this software better thanwhat we currently have in OSS world? Please suggest another if available.
Many thanks,
swb

[ubuntu-geek]

There are many OSS forum softwares. It just depends on what you are looking for and what fills your needs. Below is a list of a few.

www.phpbb.com (http://www.phpbb.com)
www.getvanilla.com (http://www.getvanilla.com)
www.simplemachines.org (http://www.simplemachines.org)

I am sure there are plenty more out there. My suggestion demo each one and then decide on the feature you need, then decide.

[WildTangent]

PunBB (www.punbb.org) is a great lightweight forum, but it lacks a few features many (not these guys..) consider essential, like personal messages, polls, a calendar. Great news is, there's tons of mods and plugins.

-Wild

[shuttleworthwannabe]

Thanks guys, this is helpful. I will try and browse thru them and see which one fits the requirements.

[Rackerz]

I would recommend phpBB for now. It's the most fully featured Open Source at the moment, phpBB 3.0 is also in Beta and should be out soon and it's a huge improvement over the current phpBB 2.