I’m glad to see bbPress, the forum used at the Wordpress site, released as a separate project. Good can only come of that, it’s a nice and simple forum script. However, read the site and you’ll see the focus is on simplicity. No avatars, no attachments. If you find web standards important, and are looking for a forum with an active community, and all the latest features, check out Unclassified Newsboard. I’ve scoped out a lot of forums to replace Invision PB on a site that I run, and UNB is the one I decided to implement. The author is very interested in keeping the board standards-compliant, and his board includes Jabber notification, which is important to me.

“Photomatt has written (the day after Christmas, nonetheless) and released a small footprint Bulletting board software called bbPress. ”
–Weblog Tools Collection - bbPress