[GoTTi]

not sure why people keep saying "mods" and options on here for vbulletin...

the phpbb community is much larger then vbulletin, and can be expanded the same ways, maybe more, because lots of people dont want to pay for licensing. its just the way it is. looking at the phpbb community right now, and i havent been there in a long time, there is more post on that community then on vbulletin.com and .org put together, so that says something. and there is over 100,000 topics dedicated to modifications of the forum for 3.0x and 2.0 there.

now i choose vbulletin ofcourse, been using it for a very long time, and recommend it to all my customers, ya the plugin system is very helpful with instaling mods, but they are smoking us with the amount of mods there are, and phpbb still dominates the amount of installs there are im sure by a huge percentage, just because it is free.

both boards have come a long way, so its hard to compare the 2. phpbb offers a trouble ticket system just like vb's main site does, there are tons of things both boards do the same. i find the admincp of vbulletin easier to use.

as far as security goes, both boards are the same with security. the froum is only as vulnerable as the server admin or the staff lets the forum be. if your running your forum on a old php server, then ya your asking to get exploited, but both boards are safe to use im sure, just really depends on what settings you got going on with the server and your forum software. and even with vb, we are still having problems with exploits and spam bots, so nothing is 100%.

try phpbb and see for yourself. then see if someone you know who has vbulletin will install a testboard for you so you can do some test on it and see for yourself. or goto the demo sign up page and ask vbulletin to make you a forum so you can test it out @ http://www.vbulletin.com/admindemo.php thats really the only way your gunna really know which forum is best, but in the end, they both do the same thing, they let you build a community from scratch, let visitors post things and talk about things, and they let you as a admin run a community, and even possibly make some money off it.

apparently, according to stats @ http://www.big-boards.com/ still holding #1 is Gaia Online, and that site is built off a heavily modified phpBB forum, and its the largest forum in the world online, supposidly. i dont even know how it has those kinds of stats cuz that forum is just BONKERS trying to navigate, but anyways, a big chunk of large boards use phpBB and a chunk use vbulletin. its all preference. good luck.