gaiaonline is big, people wonder if phpBB could handle large load, well there is one live proof 
i think avforum.com is pretty big
most popular forum:
most members:
devian art
members: 5,068,184
post: 5,390,933
most posts:
Gaia Online
members: 1,454,276
post: 191,468,563
most post last week.
Christian Forums
members: 99,310
posts: 13,584,368
posts last week: 2,331,054
most posts member/ratio
Femfatale
members: 264
posts: 613,084
ratio: 2322
members: 264
wow, I have never heard of these forums…
I could not image running a board with 1 mil posts using snitz! http://www.hitched.co.uk/sbforum/default.asp. All I can ask is WHY
lets settle this for one last time:)
it is not phpbb anymore, it has been modified so heavily you can not even claim it is except for the copyright>_>
the phpbb broke at about sometime their first year(16,777,215 posts):
http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/redirect.php?r=http%3A%2F%2Frufus.go-gaia.com%2Fforum%2Fviewtopic.php%3Fpt%3D1076368452%26p%3D41302960%2341302960
There are still plenty of large phpBB forums, though:
Thank you!!!
phpBB nuts are always jumping up and down about that site but to be honest it isn’t phpBB at all anymore. In fact it’s living proof of the opposite of their claims. phpBB actually can’t handle a load as large as that.
To be fair most boards can’t. Not even VB. That board is honestly and truly a entirely different piece of software on it’s own and if I were him… I’d release it as a whole new forum software for large forums. I don’t even think phpBB would mind because it’s so different and phpBB is free anyway so it’s not like they’d lose money. It would target an entirely different user base. And they’d get recognition for it being based off of their software.
In total there are 22239 users online OMG!! 
P.S. Let’s not forget the custom coded forums out there like www.facethejury.com 
a site dedicated to just cell phones… yes, just cell phones. Ive been on it for years.
“There are currently 505 members and 1172 guests on the boards. | Most users ever online was 6035 on 06-24-2004 at 11:29”
“Members: 223,704 | Posts: 4,528,789”
That site doesn’t have all the large communities btw For example invisionize have 90k+ members and aren’t listed. Didn’t check for vbforums.
The top 10 (for number of members) from big boards
1 custom Deviant Art
Online art community 5068184 … (5 million!)
2 custom MySpace
Social networking and dating site forums 4150200 (4 million)
3 custom IMDb
Movies message boards 4111600 (4 million)
4 vBulletin Game Show Network
Forum about old TV shows 3153056 (3 million)
5 custom Bioware forums
Neverwinter Nights video game forums 2673542 (2 million)
6 vBulletin BeepWorld
Web design and homepage creation help forum 2621213 (2 million)
7 phpBB Gaia Online
Anime roleplaying community 2484512 (2 million)
8 discuz IMobile
Mobile phones community (in chinese) 1673219 (1 million)
9 Lithium Playstation.com
Official Sony Playstation forums 1322900 (1 million)
10 IGNBoards IGN boards
General video gaming message boards 1255254 (1 million)
:aparty:
One day I hope my forum will make it on big boards
cool
does anyone know any good handicraft forums? im looking for it badly… thanks guys…
I am going to close this thread. It is generally accepted that www.big-boards.com has the best list of the largest Internet forums and this thread isn’t an invitation to post links to your own forum.
(It has been bubbling to the surface every few months with replies that we’ve been generally removing.)