Recommend PHP Forum Software?

[schilly]

We will be looking to upgrade our existing custom built forum in the next few months. Right now it is pretty basic: post, reply, quote, edit, small amount of text formatting, stickies, delete.

 

We want to make our forums more full features (like here) with polls, banners, more user interaction stuff etc with the ability to scale up easily.

 

I will be pushing for some kind of existing forum package as I don't want to reinvent the wheel. Why write my own when there is existing that is bigger and better.

 

My biggest concerns is integrating it with our existing user accounts system. I don't see importing all our posts as being that hard.

 

Can someone recommend a forum package that can offer this type of integration? Any other concerns I should be worried about?

 

 

Thanks.

[wildteen88]

Pretty much most well known forums come with some form of API for integrating your site with the forum.

 

Here is a list of popular forums you can checkout

SimpleMachines Forum (what this site uses)

PHPBB3

MyBB

IPB (not free)

Vbulletin (not free)

[schilly]

Cool thanks.

[Tazerenix]

SMF is very easy to hook with your current website using the SSI.php file. MyBB is very good as a board and offers a plugin framework for easy plugin installation. I suggest one of those two.

[schilly]

Awesome. Thanks Taz. I'll look into these more when we do our forum review.

[Tazerenix]

no problemo

[Daniel0]

SMF is very easy to hook with your current website using the SSI.php file.

 

I beg to differ. SMF's SSI.php hijacks the sessions, global namespace and the superglobals. You can write your website based on it, but integrating it with something existing would be difficult.

[schilly]

Any recommendations Daniel?

 

I would need it to integrate with our user accounts table (username, pw, address, etc) for logging in and authenticating.

[Daniel0]

I'd go with IP.Board if you're willing to pay. If you're not, then I have no recommendations.