forum software

waht do you reccomend?

[brokenbricks]

I will be starting a new site shortly, I intend to set up a forum. Now, from a webmaster POV what forum software is best? Is there certain software more SE friendly then others? I want the pages to be indexed easily and frequently...

Any thoughts would help

Thanks

[Oldiesmann]

If you're looking for free software, I'd go with SMF (Simple Machines Forum), which has a built-in feature to change your URLs to look like static HTML pages... Example:

Without this feature:

URL to a particular board - {url_to_your_forum}/index.php?board=1
URL to a particular topic - {url_to_your_forum}/index.php?topic=1
URL to a particular message - {url_to_your_forum}/index.php?topic=1.msg1#msg1

With this feature:

URL to a particular board - {url_to_your_forum}/index.php/board,1.html
URL to a particular topic - {url_to_your_forum}/index.php/topic,1.thml
URL to a particular message - {url_to_your_forum}/index.php/topic,1.msg1.html#msg1

In addition, SMF has loads of great features:

XML/RSS/RSS2 feeds generated from board content
3 wireless modes (wap, wap2 and imode)
SSI.php - a file containing over 30 functions designed to help you easily integrate the board with your site.
Sub-boards - unlimited nesting
30+ bbcode tags
Multiple smiley sets - let your users choose which one they want to use (can be disabled if you don't want them to select smiley sets)
Package manager - add new features directly from the admin center without having to touch the code.
Easy-to-install themes - upload an archive through the admin center and the system does all the rest.
Powerful theme system - each major area has its own template file, so you can customize the layout of each section. This also allows for greater customization.

[kodaks]

This may help, and there are a few other threads like it:
[webmasterworld.com...]