I tried a few BB's before taking the decision to stick with Joo!BB.
It is easy enough to maintain and has all the functions you'd ever need, as an added bonus it looks good too... ;)

Super forum!

Many thanks!

//Anders

This really knocks the stuffing out of everything else that I have seen! Real OO-PHP and superb Joomla integration. As others have already noted, it does so much while - so they say - ignoring or replacing other extensions, that it may not be the right choice for everyone, but if you just want a Joomla site with the CMS side of Joomla for more stable content and to also have a community and forums for more user interaction then this is it - and the Captcha integration in the JooBB registration solves the problem of the lack of aforesaid in standard Joomla.
0.9.0 still has some PHP errors in it, but I'm sure the developer will soon have those sorted out. So many thanks to Robert for a great product!

I have been using this for almost 3 mos. now even though it's still in beta. It has served me well and has superior looks to most of the other forums that I looked at.

The developer is working fairly quickly to get this out of beta and takes suggestions seriously. My users love this forum.

The database mods have not been that difficult to keep up with and as it is in verzion .7.7 right now, it is anticipated that beginning with .9, upgrade paths will be offered.

Several users have submitted alternative templates and the forum community is building up so that answers can be gotten fairly quickly.

Really good job - it's all I need ;) thank you gays!

greetings from poland

I started testing this forum component from the beginnings!
There was many bugs but it is getting better day by day!

Now i have to say only good words!

The only thing is missing is a PM system or an integration option with an existing like uddeim

Good job!!!

I little more try and it will be a great fireboard alternative!

Far superior to what you would expect from a Beta. it looks better than some of the stable production systems.

Alas, I am removing it and moving to another Forum solution. The developer is target fixated on Joo!BB being a complete solution - basically everything you need on top of Joomla. On inch further and it would be a standalone system. He has made it clear he is not knowledgeable of, nor does he care about interfacing with other extensions - most notably CB. He replies that Joo!BB will have all the feature of CB and will even replace some core features of Joomla that he wants to do better. If you want a full featured Forum system that runs on Joomla (in about a year) this is a great package. But if you need to interface with other comments, ratings, blog, gallery, etc. extensions, this system is not the answer.

One warning: verify with your Hosting service if they have PHP 5 installed on your web service instance. I naively added a .htaccess file to favor PHP 5 over PHP 4, not realizing that I didn't even HAVE PHP 5 available. With GoDaddy hosting you have to specifically ask them to reconfigure your hosting environment and then ask them to put PP 5 in place.

This is a solid beta. It installed without any problems and everything works as it should so far. The design looks great and I love the ability to change themes. It has many nice features common in modern forums such as BBcode, smilies, user ranking, groups, etc. However, what it is missing is a deal breaker for me. I need a forum with a way to ban bad users (such as spammers and trolls). While you can just delete a user there is no way to ban by IP and there are not many admin options for other administrative tasks from within the board layout. This is a good forum for anyone who wants an easy yet sophisticated solution but doesn't have a need for strong user control.

I hope to see IP banning in the post-beta versions.

The developer states that the forum should not be used in production as it is still beta.....If that is the case, I can't wait to see what he releases as stable! It will probably do my grocery shopping for me.
This forum is absolutely exactly what I needed. It is so simple to configure.
When I get paid on this project, I will not be donating to the pizza fund on this one......I will be donating to the Filet Mignon fund. That is what this extension does for this particular site that I am developing. It transforms it from my mediocre efforts into a work of art. Many thanks.

I looked at all of the other forums, as I had a very specific requirement, and this is the only one that could deliver - the two issues which really sold this component for me were:

1. Ability to allow a user access to one forum but deny access to another

2. Ability to create custom profile fields that were displayed when visitors look at a user's profile

Although the author goes to great lengths to state that the component is beta I have experienced no issues in the front end, and only one in the back end, which was not a showstopper anyway. The support forums for this component seem to be very active as well, which is always a good sign.

Two thumbs up!

I can't wait for this to be listed as stable, I have bridged other board systems and have waited for a fully feature packed native Joomla forum and this is going to be it!

Great job on it!

This is the BBS that I've been waiting years for. It is elegant, easy-to-use and it grows more powerful each passing day. The support community is growing, and there are some extremely helpful & talented people there. The developer, despite being the lone gunman on an enormous project, is quickly implementing the feature requests of the community while working toward release stabilization. There is no doubt that this board will quickly become the standard for Joomla sites. If you haven't been watching this board in development, do yourself a favor and give it a try. It is still Beta and is unrecommended on a live site, but the developer is getting closer and closer to a stable release!

I have tried an early PHPBB3 bridge, Fireboard, and have been monitoring JooBB development for the past 4 months. IMO, JooBB Joomla 1.5 native origin, makes it possible the open with the best future for Joomla!

With more that 40 commits in the last 7 days, the developer is doing a superb job. JooBB still need to have more styles/templates. Also, a Last Posts Module is terrible needed.

After waiting and monitoring JooBB development through svn, I am giving it a "GO". I have installed as my default forum.

Thanks the developer and hope other coders will help him, with more styles, addons and improvement to the code.

Redards!

I am trying Joo!BB since a couple of days and feel impressed about the usability, easy installation and high functionality, even in this pre-beta state.
The only issue I struggled with was the fact, Joo!BB requires PHP 5.x to be active on your domain. Mine was still running at 4.4x, so I had a couple of parse issues and other errors after installing.
However, once I managed to switch on PHP 5.0, everything was running perfect. The Support forum, naming especially "Robbie", was a great help to sort out the initial issues and to start up.
I will now follow this forum over the coming beta and to the final release. I know, this is exactly what I was looking for. if somebody wants to see my Joo!BB test forum, go to www.scifi-world.de
Some minor issues may be still present on this early release, however, I'm convinved Joo!BB is going to be a major component for J 1.5x users, locking forward.

Downloaded, installed and configured this one quite fast. I had to do a little bit of research due to my site not be in english, but I found a great guide on how to do a translation on their site. I did that (not actually translated anything, just copied the english language sets) and it works pretty good. I will love to see some image / attachment functions though. Its been promised in the first beta, but no date or progression report is out yet. Considering the alpha state of this one I see forward to the first beta, and its absolutely one to watch closely. The documentation is not so good (could have been more of it), and the support forums are not so active, but I guess it will be if this project pass its alpha state tag.

I give it average due to it been in alpha, but still a good alpha version. Its the only 1.5 native forum out there.

-K-

I installed this the other day and it was very simple to set up, is working well so far so for an early release version this excellent.

This forum extension is probably the best for joomla if you do not want to use a bridge for the login etc, it will install and run great with Joomla 1.5 (works for sure with 1.5.5). Considering this component has been created by one person as university project you will be suprised to how good it actually works. The author needs to get some assistance with futher development of JooBB, as support, updates and the general upkeep will only suffer if it remains the responsibilty of a single person for all. The beta version is due for release shortly, so I say watch this space.

I installed JooBB 6 weeks ago and so far have not encounterd any problems. Setup and install was smooth. Configuration was a bit challenging. It took me awhile to figure out the forum layout and how to make it work for me.

My site's needs are fairly basic and JooBBs default color set up worked ok with the site. Actually it looks pretty good.

This has been the best forum so far over and above fireboard in many ways.
I am using it in a production environment but those of you not prepared to do some MySQL digging and CSS adjusting please do not attempt it. It's a bit buggy when attempting to mess with the single default style.

Pros:

-Well thought out visual design - very easy on the eyes!!
-Extremely easy to view and navigate for Newbie visitors to your forum
-Configuration is straightforward (takes a bit to learn at first but still not bad).
-several options for colors
-Install was pretty simple if you read the instructions on the site
-The developers site is very well put together with easy navigation to find what you need


Cons: (based on the fact is is still in alpha)

-Styles limited - One style is all you get and if you stray from the default you will have to do some digging (see intro paragraph above in this review) If you know your way around Joomla it shouldn't be tough to fix.

-User Sync seems a bit redundant but nothing out of the ordinary for some other forums.

-Follows the default Joomla template styles but has its own mixed in (If your site is black with white text you may not see the text in posts due to the forum having a white background) easily fixable in the CSS for your default template but still a nuisance.

All in all this is definitely one to watch closely!!

Excellent forum, and fully integrated. It's small and takes full advantage of Joomla (fast, lots of parameters to make it do exactly what you want, etc.)

It's all I need, and does it very well.

Only regret is that you cannot switch off the need for a "design" (why is it not called "template"?); then it would automatically adapt to the colors of the website. But, hey, it should not be too complicated to change the included drawings.

So, this is only an alpha version ... that is VERY promising!!

Thank you for sharing!

No problems with the installation.
Configuration in admin panel works fine.
Its simpel but POWERFULL. All you want a forum to be.

A CB plugin would bethe TOP for this forum.

HD