Wordpress isn't a forum software, but it has a addon that allows you to have a forum built into it.
My favorite free, would definitely be phpBB, as it always has security updates and other stuff done frequent enough. Paid software would go with XenForo atm, as the development community seems pretty active.
Did you say free or paid? or just any that's based to the subject of this topic.
Me, As I have mention over the years before on other threads it's invisionpower 🙂 Not cheap to run at times as it's paid but always liked it and always run the fourm
I would say XenForo, but I have a lot of respect for MyBB, ProBoards, IPB, bbPress, and phpBB. Anyway, I haven't tried Burning Boards and SMF, Jcink seems OK.
My favourite forum software is MyBB. I'm very familiar with it so I can easily customize it to my liking. There are also a lot of free themes and plugins.
I've used CreateAForum and ProBoards. ProBoard isn't really mine and MyBB was a nightmare to set-up. My favourite is CreateAForum which is what my current forum uses.
I do not have a lot of experience with managing a forum, however, I have been participating on forums since a long time. Based on user experience, I think Xenforo is a good forum script. However, this is a premium forum script. SMF is a good free forum script.