Need an easy to use free Forum program: Help (1 Viewer)

[Alf S]

Hey folks,

My wife and some of her net friends want to move from the crappy Yahoo Groups style "forum" and start their own private forum.

I have webspace available, but need to know where I can download an EASY to use FREE forum program that a handful of ladies can chat and post messages on.

Any ideas??

Thanks

Alfer

 

[Bill Catherall]

Have you thought of just creating one on www.ezboard.com? It's free, but you have to put up with pop-up ads and banners. If you want to upgrade it to no advertisments it's a very affordable price.
I set up a board there and it's very easy to administer. You can also make it private and require passwords to register. It's powerful and customizable.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

If you have an NTserver that can run ASP, this free forum script is cool:
http://www.ymonda.co.uk/productdetai...ctid=6&catid=3
Powerful enough to handle medium traffic- completely customizable, and pretty well designed.
-Vince

 

[Darren Lewis]

EzBoard is easy to set up. You can have it free with ads or about $30 for 6 months with no ads. It's where I host my forum.

 

[Darren Lewis]

Yabb looks interesting. Not sure if my web host package has all the features it needs. Does anyone run it on their sites? Do they spam your site with ads?

Problem I've found with ezboard is that you don't get the feeling of your forum being unique to your site. They host it on their servers and control the user access etc. To become a member you need to register through ezboard and be subjected to their emails and spam advertising. I'm also finding that it has some annoying bugs and querks that are starting to get on my nerves.

I really like vBulletin but it's not an option to me at the moment.

How much knowledge do you need to run forum software. I can write HTML but know nothing about PERL or SQL.

 

[Darren Lewis]

I'm with 1&1 Internet at the moment. They're very good. I've emailed them to see whether my current pack will support the YaBB forum software

 

[Matt DeVillier]

try the Snitz Forums 2000 if you're on an NT server. It's what I use for the forums on my site, and has done a solid job so far. It was easy to set up/administer, and has handled forum traffic well (just be sure to update the access database from 97 to 2000 or 2002 if you go that route)

 

[Darren Lewis]

According to my webhosts FAQs

Our servers are Pentium III 500 systems running Linux as operating system and Apache as web server. The machines are protected by RAID5-systems.

 

[Darren Lewis]

Another free forum is at ProBoards which is similar to ezboard, but the features seem more professional - much more like vBulletin.

 

[Jon_R]

if you are unix aware check out www.freshmeat.com for some web boards. there are lots of them.
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