I've been looking at UBB threads, Vbulletin, IP.Board, PHPBB3, and just recently SMF. I thought it would be a simple decision but I really can't decide which software would be best for me.

Some of the things I like about UBB are:

a) There's an "all" button on the thread where I can see all the posts so I don't have to look at one page and then go to the next page and so on if there are many replies to a post.
b) When I go back to a forum I can easily see how many replies are unread in a post. If there's no number there I don't need to look at that post.
c) Email contents of a post sends everything in an email rather than just a link.
d) Preview post
e) Quick reply

There are probably a lot more things I like as I've been a member of a UBB board for a few years and I have a post total of over 1,000.

Things I like about PHPBB3:

a) The new style they have looks great.

What I'd like to hear is what other reasons are there for choosing UBB. I heard talk about PHPBB not being secure but I believe those problems have been fixed in the later release. Same for problems with vbulleting and IP.Board. Yeah they all had problems so I'm hoping that someone can tell me something new and give me some fresh reasons to consider UBB. Note that cost doesn't factor into my decision.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me.

Things to hate about PHPBB: they get hacked, constantly... Their captcha doesn't work for crap (as it still lets bots register and spam)...

I'm not saying this as a UBB fanatic, or beta tester, I'm saying it as someone who actually had a PHPBB2 forum up for several years and finally got tired of the spam, patches, etc and ended up CLOSING the community...

There are plenty of threads in this forum which cover your topic however, we've all given our opinions on why we like the UBB, and instead of posting it again, I'd like to encourage you to just read through the Pre Sales forum as you'll be able to hear from several members who aren't active here "all of the time".

Thanks Gizmo for the quick reply. I did spend time reading the pre-sales questions but I noticed a lot of the replies were maybe for some of the older versions of software. For example you mention PHPBB2. I guess I'm hearing that PHPBB3 is very much improved. I'll spend more time reading the forum and thanks again.

Richard

This looks like 5-1 for UBB.threads

PHP3 isn't as bad as PHP2 was hackwise. As for navigation on the forum itself, ubb for me is the clear winner.

I should also include that I was also beta testing PHPBB3 before purging the community; so I doubt much changed from what I last used