Whilst you might think that whether or not you go down the route of vBulletin instead of IPB wont effect the forums success or popularity, but in fact fluxuating with different forum themes of course; choosing the appropriate forum software can be crucial for getting the most out of your forum and attracting members and activity in them as well can be much easier attained by conducting your research first. Which i am going to do for you.
vBulletin:
(
Purchase,
Features)
Essentially vBulletin is the widest and most common used of all the popular forum software. With a wide following from more advanced and experienced coders due itself advanced nature has attracted a wealth or interesting skins and modifications to give your members more end user options and major additions to provide your board with a unique point to plug. vBulletin has a series of licensing options which are fairly flexible and worth-while considering how you get access to an experienced support squad and separate customizations forum with thousands upon thousands of interesting and commendable hacks to install. Currently being developed means that the software is always filing out bugs and issues; although this really isn't the safe bet for a newer and ripening user due to the complexity of adding in particular modifications and making visual alterations to the template system; if you are confident with your lines upon lines of code and like to make your board look completely different than the next whilst running a multitude of similar modifications and skin presets then fairly pricey option for you.
Invision Power Board:
(
Purchase,
Features)
IPB was often considered an extremely popular choice whence it was open source and free ware software meant it exploited the very reasons for why administrators fround upon the somewhat costly vBulletin license. But now adopting a similar method IPB is now paid software but being developed also at a fiercely fast pace in a quite but apparent onslaught with vBulletin for forum software supremacy they have added a host of new and interesting features with their latest 2.1 release including the ability to import RSS from popular websites such as BBC and Slashdot directly into their forums as a singular post. If you are intending upon running a site with average capabilities in regards to what vBulletin has to offer yet has a selection of slightly more integrated and user friendly modifications which is why teenage marketed forums such as those Anime, Yugioh and TV related tend to opt for this visually appealing option.
phpBB:
(
Download,
Features)
The "user unwillingly to pay" choice, not as heavily developed as the previous two powerhouses and has recently marked the past couple of months a particular black spot after suffering a very public security exploit which left all servers running phpBB extremely vulnerable to deletion and ill doings to their hard work. Whilst this is rare this has certainly scared a lot of users off using the product which means only one thing; less development both in the side of the forum software itself and also the modifications and skins too leaving it reletivly bare in comparison to the behemoths which IPB and VB are when comparing the amount of appropriate modifications and skins are available. Only really a preferred choice if you are unwilling to pay.
The Staff Lounge - Your vBulletin Resource.
vBulletin,
InvisionFree,
IPB,
phpBB and
Forum Resources.