Smf Vs Vbulletin Vs Phpbb

SMF is lightweight and feature rich compared to phpbb. PhbBB on the other hand is like the "free version of Vbulletin" though very prone to spambots. Vbulletin tops for me due to its thousands of mods, themes and plugins and you just cant beat the security. The development team is constantly updating security patches. one thing though, vbulletin is really heavy and resource intensive. It surely takes longer than the other two to setup and configure but once its up and running the other two start competing for the number 2 slot

I agree with the previous poster, Vbulletin is feature rich and easy to use. Smf beats phpb, as far as I am concerned it is the best free forum software

For me it is SMF.

1. Its free
2. It has an active community forum
3. It has loads of mods.

phpBB all the way, if you're not super proficient at it, it might take a bit of research to figure out how to do something but in my experiences it turns out much better.

From the user standpoint though, it really just depends how much work the Admins are willing to do behind the scenes, you can make any of those systems look polished with all the special bells and whistles.
Demo : free forums

Yet somehow, you have also posted on a smf forum, an older version at that 

Hey! Thanx for this beautiful place of the Inet!!