I've been working with Joomla websites since the early Mambo days. I went through the nightmares of integrating other forum's into Joomla with bridges and hacks and such. I used SMF, vbulletin, and PHPBB2 and 3, and many sites used Fireboard.

July of last year I discovered Agora. Without question, it is hands down the best component you can use in your Joomla Community. Support has been exceptional, and it is fast. Really, really fast. MySQL queries are kept to a minimum, there's not a lot of fluff (icon's graphics and such) and I'd say out of the 20 sites I have used it on, it has worked with every template, with little or no problems.

I did have one problem with a rockettheme template in December. Hazzaa was very quick to look into it. I provided him access to thwe backend of the site, as it was more than a css related issue. He found the problem, fixed it and in the next release, he fixed it there as well. Unlike the reviewer below, I am more than satisified with my experience with getting a problem resolved effortlessly. That is the kind of service people should be thankful for. Many developers do no more support on their product than a forum post and then, it may be one short line "Looking into it" and that's the last you hear from them.

The wiki recently underwent a change...for the better. The previous wiki was, shall I say, lacking. All features, controls, and administration are very well documented, and they are adding and refining almost daily.

I don't understand how anyone could complain about support from joomlame and Hazzaa in particular given they have gone out of there way to provide the Joomla Community a fantastic forum that is beyond anything we have seen to date.

After using this component for almost a year on many sites, I would recommend this forum to anyone that wants a stable, fast, and fully integrated forum on their site.