Jaycee

Yes it's important for people to know that administering a forum is not as easy as it might first seem from looking at the front end. Obviously a great deal of work goes into well-run sites such as this one. Also, choosing a platform requires some careful consideration of a lot of factors, including budget, knowledge and resources - what might suit one forum owner may not be the best choice for another person due to different skill set and willingness and ability to hire someone with the right skillset. Cheers, John

The site you link to uses vbulletin, which is what i linked to in my post above. The software costs less than $400, and decent templates can be had for less than $100. I'm not sure what you have been quoted for $10k, but that would have to include some fairly heavy customisation. A basic forum using vbulletin can be setup in less than a day... But you're right about the ongoing commitment. Cheers, John

One of the most popular, and in my opinion the best commercial package is vbulletin - https://www.vbulletin.com/ It's not free, but very well supported and offers great features. Cheers, John