Fourm Software??

Im currently developing some forums for my gaming site and I have no idea which fourm software i can use. I really apreciate your opinions!

Things I NEED.
-Points/Bank/Donate System Modification
-Easy to code templates, or a place where i can buy templates.
-Lots of modifications i can download for free.
-Free/open source software.

Kthx.

Questions.
1. What Forum Software do you reccomend?
2. Why do you reccomend this?
3. Where can i get themes/mods?
4. Is coding templates for this easy?
5. Is it cheap to hire a coder to do this ^^?

Kthx Sixtys

I'd suggest SMF or MyBB

1) SMF or MyBB
2) Free, powerful, secure... the works.
3) On the homepages (google is your friend)
4) Never really tried it myself.
5) Well, it's free software. Loads of people would be willing to give you a hand, and I'm sure some people could be hired.

SMF is better if you're looking for more mods and themes, but I personally think MyBB is a better script.

I personally would go with vBulletin or Invision Board. They do however cost about $100 a license, but are well worth it. vBulletin is considered more of a business standard, but I have found much more out of Invision.

From what htmlmaster said, I've seen SMF coming up a lot, and it looks pretty good. It's also free, so that may be something more desirable.

So I looked at this vBulletin site and they seem to be pretty easy to use. I love that you can buy phone support for a year for only $300.00

Have you used it before? Do you know if you can make the fourm secure? IE require users to register and be manually approved by the fourm admin before being allowed to see anything? Do you know if this will pervent Search eng from cacheing your pages and publishing cached content out from searches?

Thanks,

Sean~

Go with vBulletin totally, IPB is also almost as good but vB has better themes, and better mods.

PhpBB is good enough for this expecially with the points system. I know some great mods for security and all the stuff you listed!

i will recommend you for IPB