I plan to create a web journal (not in expressionengine) and am going to be including a forum on my site. Part of the forum will be used for discussion of my blog entries (every entry will have a link at the bottom to a forum topic about that entry). The rest of the forum will just be for general discussions among my visitors.
I am debating between using punBB and the ExpressionEngine forum module for my forum. Could anyone give me advice on which is better? I know people may be biased here, but hopefully some people can give me objective analysis.
I especially want something with straightforward CSS styling so I can tightly integrate the look of the forum with the look of my site. For example, I’m looking to have all the user control/registration/login links in a sidebar, and not at the top of the page.
I also want the software to be lightweight and simple. I want there to be no spam. In terms of the amount of features, I think both punbb (with extensions) and EE are adequate.
What are the relative pros and cons of each vis a vis the other??
Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me!