The Good

    For administrators that have used JoomlaBoard, FireBoard is a no brainier.  Since its development was created off of JoomlaBoard, the administration part is almost identical.  The front end has been smoothed out and given a nice face lift.  The default templates put the best JoomlaBoard templates to shame.  This is not because the default templates are good, but because the handler (common to all templates) has been fixed and improved.  There are a few templates already available for download, and they all are EXCELLENT!  There's no more module hack to add phpBB style buttons to your forum, just drop them in the images folder!  This is such a smoother approach.

The Bad

    While the templating system should be praised,  I have a major problem with it.  To add a new template, you must upload the new template directory by hand.  An automatic installer should have been added.  I still REALLY don't like the Moderator settings (they do the job, but are a PITA to use).  FireBoard still has the same javascript refresh problem that JoomlaBoard had.  I don't know fully why it's there, but it should be fixed.  

The Ugly

    One feature that I really wish FireBoard had, which ALL of the major forums have (except SMF/JoomlaBoard), is the ability to assign user groups, and limit forum access to certain groups.  I understand that Joomla has ACL issues, but you could do this completely within FireBoard.  I'm not talking anything fancy here, just the ability to create a group 'Subscribers', assign users to the group, and create a forum that only members of that group could see.  If this feature could be added, I think that FireBoard would become the ultimate Joomla forum system.

The Results

    All in all, I am VERY happy with FireBoard, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a good, fast, and integrated forum for Joomla.  The few issues I have with it are far offset by what it does offer.  What it does offer, is a fast, lightweight, almost full featured forum that slips right in to Joomla, and just works.  It's that simple.