Vanilla Forums/Evaluation

Vanilla was initially recommended by Anthony:

I initially recommended vanilla based on polling my coworkers.  I work at a company that converts large sites off of their current platforms and onto ours.
Most of the conversions are away from vbulletin with phpbb in preparation.  My coworkers have done a lot of research on the question but I myself can only say
I don't like vbulletin or phpbb very much based on the many random forums I've read that use them.  Vanilla seems better written so far
but I haven't seen it nearly as much of course.
Anyway, if there's anything super-critical that's missing, I could probably write it.

Vanilla seems to be more modular and easy to administer / customize. Here's an excerpt from http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/13239/phpbb-vs.-vforums/p1:

Vanilla has Smilies and Signatures as add-ons. I have used phpBB before and I can say Vanilla is much easier to theme and customize. 
There are some features you might be missing or see as must have, but its nothing a couple of moments of PHP scripting could not fix.
The best bet would be to download it and try it out on a test subdomain. You will be surprised, I know I was...

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ive used phpbb extensively in the past, and hands down vanilla is the better choice. like adrian said, give it a try
and let us know what you think

Pros and Cons

Cons:

• Vanilla is not used by as many sites as phpBB
• At least 2 discussions suggest we should replace Vanilla:
  • http://forum.opensourceecology.org/discussion/215/upgrading-forum-software
  • http://forum.opensourceecology.org/discussion/comment/89#Comment_89

Pros:

Alternatives

• e107
• phpBB

See Also

• Comparison chart: http://www.forum-software.org/forum-comparator/phpbb3-vs-vanilla