Forum suggestions

In some of the mods there is the default Orca Forum, is there any substitute one can use instead, something simpler and nicer and of course easier to use? Any ideas?

I think there are a few in the market, around $200 for integration with site.

http://www.boonex.com/m/D6_and_D7_VBULLETIN_3_and_4_completely_replace_ORCA

 RE:

 I'd stay away from that one.  The guy never was able to show a demo, in spite of me asking for months.  The guy also wants complete access to the server to alter Dolphins source files.  A really bad way to go, in my opinion.

Deano did a Vanilla forum integration a while back, but I don't know the status of it.

 Yeah, that would be my choice of general upgrade at the moment. 

Not sure its 7.1 ready though? 

Personally, I think the forums aren't that bad, depends how you use them.

What I would like to see is a major improvement on the comments setup.. Far too plain and un-engaging in its standard format. 

Could do with a mod that replaces comments with forum style posts. That way, you users can reply with videos, photos as well as text... comments, its just text.

Would be great to have this on each article, blog, video etc... then the admin option to have each items 'thread' appear in the general forum under the 'articles forum' or 'videos forum' etc... proper linking and engaging... would encourage much more site crawling by users and interaction!

THIS would be a mod I would happily pay for :-)