Which program is "easier"

I have written an article on the relative merits and demerits of phpBB on my blog. You can read it here. Hope you find it useful.

If you're a power user, definitely go for something like Simple Machines if you cannot afford the price of vBulletin. If you can afford it, go with vBulletin.

You'll struggle with a heavily modded phpBB board, believe me, because updating will be difficult and you may lose some data if you convert later to another forum.

Well phpbb is basic and is well suited for beginners if you are serious about your community and wish to keep it for long run then go with VB or IPB whichever suites your needs.

Well phpbb is basic and is well suited for beginners if you are serious about your community and wish to keep it for long run then go with VB or IPB whichever suites your needs.

The fact is, I'm serious about my community, but I cannot afford the price of vBulletin or IPB at present. Exchange rates are against me and I will end up paying a huge amount.

So one need not necessarily use phpBB if you cannot afford the paid ones. You can also use YaBB (which is perl-based) or SMF (Simple Machines). I think SMF is quite a powerful forum software considering that it's free.

It's admin panel takes some getting used to, but the fact is: it's free, it's feature rich and it's extremely configurable and has a very, very sophisticated permissions system that cannot even be matched by phpBB.

So one need not necessarily use phpBB you know. I made the mistake of not researching enough before implementing a forum solution.

There are many of us who are serious about a community, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we can afford vB or IPB. Not all of us are in a position to buy licenses from Jelsoft or Invision.

My main concern was that I didn't want to spend the money on VB in case I had as many problems updating as I did/do with phpBB.

But I will start with it and wait until it gets busier then switch to VB.

harishankar- thank you for the article - very informative.

You're welcome toopie :)