Simplemachines or phpbb or other

[nineseven]

Hi

I'm thinking of creating a forum as part of my site and have narrowed down the choice to either

http://www.simplemachines.org (http://www.simplemachines.org/)

or

http://www.phpbb.com (http://www.phpbb.com/)

Does anyone have any advice on what is the best or is it better to spend a little cash and get vBulletin or is there another choice that you could recomend?

I would be looking to customize the templates so it must be easy to template and I also want to run ads and adsense so it would need to be able incorporate these easily!

Thanks

[ServWise]

Another option you might consider is myBB http://www.mybboard.net/, ive been using it for a while and it works well. Certainly prefer it to Simple Machines which I have also run on another site. If the project has the money though I would probably fork out for vBulletin.

[Aspect Investments]

SMF gets my vote.

[consultant]

Both are fine, but I have tended to side with SMF!

[LittleGreenOrange]

I am opposite, I like phpbb3. I have used it a lot and i have used smf, mybb and a few others. If you are wanting a forum for free i suggest phpbb3. It is very easy to use and you can do a lot with it, lots of mods, templates very easy to customize etc.

VB is good but in my opinion that it better if you are basing your main site around a forum. It is to 'powerful' as a site add on

[nineseven]

Thanks for your replies.

Ive decided to go with phpbb3 as I found a great ad management tool that is exactly that i wanted so seems perfect.