One of the friend is looking for a Free Forum Software around with best features, though i asked him to purchase vbulletin, but he isn’t in mood of spending the money 
Any recommendation for the forum softwares, with an ease of operation as well as feature rich ??
Cheers !!
phpbb/smf. both are nice 
+1 phpbb.
used it for a college project in my engg days.
Heard the phpBB is very much hacker friendly, is it so ?
smf ?? care to elaborate !!
EDIT : is it Simple machine forum ? Is it any good ? can u provide any link of a nice site running @ SMF ?
Yes, SMF = Simple Machines Forum
Example Forum - Joomla! Community Forum - Index
+1 for SMF. I’ve used it for two forums, and i’d say its better than phpbb when it comes to ease of customization, available plugins, and easy to understand admin inteface.
phpBB is more widely used, and it has more mods, but you need to actually edit the code manually to implement a mod. I’ve heard that you dont need to do that with SMF.
any custom hacks you do with SMF has to be open sourced, or i think its license is like that .
PhpBB3 is now stable
Thanks for the link buddy, it is surely a BIG forum !!
Actually his requirement is one which has easy but effective administration of the forum. Also as you are already a SMF user, a small confusion arose last night while surfing do we have some feature in SMF wherein all posts made by users must be approved by mod before publishing ?
:huh: then surely the phpBB is not going to be his choice, as according to my understanding mods need to be integrated now & then and my friend is not so much techie to code php lines.
+1 on Joomla + SMF
no, you dont have to know php. its just some add this , remove this , replace that stuff
phpBB • View topic - [Tutorial] How to install a MOD for more details.
joomla is better if you need to have a portal functionality as well. the rest are pure forums.
phpBB is good, and newer versions are more secured.. Also you can install security hacks on it 
But no.1 is phpbb in free forum sector.
Even i am inclined over the same idea right now, but would love to see a live example of running Joomla + SMF. Any pointers pls??
Well, my friend is like that only who run away from even a copy paste job… you know those crapy bast**d who copy your project in computer classes he is one of them, and i am one of whom he stole 
Thanks for the great link anyways.
Also, as per my understanding till now Joomla is a portal software and SMF is a forum software. Both of them need to integrated and linked, but work great hand in hand. Correct me if i am wrong somewhere !! Also, any pointers to SMF + Joomla website running ??
Now the installation part, is the SMF and joomla installation easy or typical ?
Yeah i am too hearing the same from lots of gurus around here. Just to clarify, do phpbb has some inbuilt function and any hack available for “Portal” kinda Stuff ?? Any pointers ?
Can’t say, its inbuilt. But you can add Portal, point systems and all… After installing Forum. Its damn easy, for the familiar persons with PHP editing
Yea, you can set that option in the admin panel. Its actually allows control of every aspect of posting/categories/moderation. And most of all, the admin interface isn’t as confusing as phpbb.
Also, you do have a portal package for SMF. It works out of the box after installation, and it works good. You can get it here TinyPortal
That was great !! Any pointer to a SMF forum implemented with Tinyportal to see tinyportal in action.
EDIT: Googled a bit and got some pointers
TekGUI
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