Forum Services

[JustForWebmasters]

Hello everybody,
What I'm looking for is a free, simple (but intuitive) message board/forum program. I run Just for Webmasters which is an informational web site for webmasters and I want to have a community forum system. Is there something like vBulletin but for free? Any help would be appreciated.

[mjames]

http://www.phpbb.com
http://www.ikonboard.com
http://www.ezboard.com

[HorseDude]

Take a look at the site in my sig.

If you like the forums there, surf on over to http://www.yabb.org and download it.

Its free, a no-brainer to setup, they have many of the cool features you find in forums like vB etc...I did say it was FREE so don't expect it to be as good as vB because it aint. If you dont have much traffic (less than 50,000 page views a week) it should do that job.

In my opinion its much better than the free version of UBB or any other free ones i've come accross, that is only my opinion.

cheers!

[wert]

I like the look of the YABB BBS system, but it seems kinda slow. You should try phpBB. It seems much quicker....

[mjames]

Yabb is okay, but I heard they had a couple of severe security errors previously.

[OllieO]

My vote goes to EZBoard (I'm really plugging them at the moment!).

Very customisable etc. The only problem I'm having at the moment is that they only have 20 pages of 20 threads for each forum, so I'm constantly archiving stuff. I hope to get around it by opening up a couple of new forums (which I just have ).

But they're free, the banner isn't too obtrusive, and if you want to can pay to get rid of it .

[HorseDude]

YaBB did have some pretty pathetic security problems. Apparently this has since been fixed with the latest version, then again almost everything does infact have some sort of security problem.

[wert]

I used to use ezboards and they have excellent features. However, they are slooooooowww...

[HorseDude]

For some reason www.phpbb.com doesnt seem to work for me.

My guess is it would be a good choice since it uses the all mighty php.

ezboards totally sux and shouldn't ever be talked about in the same sentence as these other awesome setups you can also get for free. Same goes for delphi or what ever they are.

You see they arnt that hard to setup, the process normally goes like this

* upload files
* re-upload files in correct format
* duh! 500 error
* duh! software error
* duh! another 500 error
*rips out some hair*
* forum works fine
* no-one will post
* better upgrade to the next version
* repeat the above

someone said "so slooooooow" I take you you were trying to complement them?

cheers, I hope you've found some help in this thread.