I've been to numerous forums including this one, which all seem to have the same relative design.

I am starting a website where I plan to have tons of content and would like to have a forum like this.

Is there any free options? Is there any good pay options?

What is the best option for me? My site is fitness based, I bought the domain AskTheTrainer.com

Thanks for any help!

vbulletin is by far the best, IMO.

I don't run any free ones. I once ran SMF but it's options were limited. Take a look at these charts for comparisons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...ware_%28PHP%29

Michael this forum is run on vBulletin as are many other forums. It's the one I like the most as an end user. My second choice would be SMF. Neither is free, but both are great choices.

I think the most popular free option is still phpBB. It used to have security issues and needed frequent upgrading. I think the latest release is better where security is concerned, but please don't hold me to that or take my word for it. I'm just repeating what I've heard and have no first hand knowledge when it comes to phpBB.

Another option you may want to consider is using a full CMS like Drupal or Joomla to run your entire site. I think both have forum applications either built in or as add ons. You might not need a stand alone forum, though a stand alone forum probably has more features.

We are using SMF for the forum for our opportunity. It is working out great. Mike the actual owner of the site had a little trouble setting it up but it's working great now.

vBulletin is good, I would say stay away from phpBB as it gets hacked quite frequently. SMF isin't a bad option either. All of these options are free.

Go here http://www.opensourcecms.com/
And click on the forums link on the left hand column, there you will see a list of the most popular forums that are available for free, and you also are given a front end, and back link to check out how things work.

Adam do you know if phpBB 3.0 has the same security issues. I had heard it didn't, but it wasn't a very confident endorsement.

Sounds like PHPnuke would be good for your site too. It has a forum option, plus it's good at managing a lot of other content. I use it on one of my sites and like it.

Nobody said IPB :/
I use IPB for the my school community site. Its really great in customization but the only problem I have with it is that I get a lot of html and whatever problems. They just come up randomly. Right now I'm getting an IPS driver error which I had for over 4 days now. I can't stand it anymore.
I'll probably switch to vB or something without so many problems.

Also, anyone know any skin that looks like the one this site is using? One that I could buy or get for free?

I'd recommend SMF as it's brilliant and free!!

It always seems to do just what you want.

i would recommend you look at wordpress (free) and also look at phpbb (also free) if you need server space to run forum I would be happy to help you.