Hi,
I need a message board for my clients and I have a couple of questions to ask:

1.Is hard to install and mange ?

2. Does a message board use up a lot of bandwidth?

3.How much can this cost and where i can find it ?

4.I know everyone.net offers a free message board , and what i like is that the message board is located on their server ( is good for bandwith but the everyone.net message board has ads) Is there any other companies which offer a similar deal ?

Thank you
Doru

1.Is hard to install and mange ?
- Usually not, they normally have easy to follow instructions.

2. Does a message board use up a lot of bandwidth?
- If it gets quite popular, as in WHT popular, it is possible.

3.How much can this cost and where i can find it ?
vBulliten http://www.vbulletin.com [Not Free]
UBB http://www.infopop.com [Not Free]
phpBB http://www.phpbb.com [ Free ]
IkonBoard http://www.ikonboard.com [ Free ]
There are others, but I would suggest looking into these, as they are well known and excellent pieces of software.

4.I know everyone.net offers a free message board , and what i like is that the message board is located on their server ( is good for bandwith but the everyone.net message board has ads) Is there any other companies which offer a similar deal ?

- Im not sure.

Thank you !! :)

I would recomend teemz (http://www.teemz.com/).
I use the free teemz message board for my site. It's very simple to install and run, that's the main reason why I like it.

I would recommend the following.


http://www.Woltlab.de [free]
http://www.openBB.net [free]

Both of the above use php & mysql. I would recommend going with a php & mysql as these type boards are more efficient for speed and reliability (in my opinion)

Though I personally wouldn't recommend remotely hosted message boards, at http://www.freewebspace.net/forums under Free Services, people discuss these more than here. The reason I would not recommend them is one, ads, two, you have little control over the forum and the messages (meaning, if performace isn't up to par, your only option is to start over completely).

OpenBB is a very good alternative for VBulletin (defacto BB as they say it :D ) They are doing a good job producing a ncie product for free. For paid ones please look out http://www.ita-studio.com/forum/en/

phpBB is good but I don't like it's interface.

http://yabb.xnull.com/

I haven't used it, but it looks pretty good and is free

it's good, reliable & fast

also easy to install

Hello

I can install PHP BB or vBulletin for you for free.

(I have phpBB myself (ie it is free) but you must purchase vBulletin yousrself if you want.

Regards,
Mac

Snitz forum is very good as well.. Free and reliable.

Funny you should mention this topic. I just installed one on my site yesterday for networking related discussions.

.

It's a Yabb board and very easy to configure.

HI there,

I heard complains that YABB eats too much server resources (similar thing with UBB).

I would choose IkonBoard; free, easy to configure and they offer MySQL version now :-)

Best,

Enigmatic

If bandwidth is a problem, then it is best to use a PHP/MySQL message board like phpBB or openbb. Using a PHP/MySQL message board with mod_gzip installed on your server will use a minimal amount of bandwidth.

Actually if you have mod_gzip installed it does not mater if it's php, cgi or regular html as long as you have it configured correctly.

OTOH, I do agree with you that a php/mysql will not stress your server as much. Any of the cgi/flat file will put a strain on your server.

I'm very partial to phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com). V2.0 is looking very good.

Frank

Here are two highly recomended forums:

Ultimate Bulletin Board
http://www.infopop.com

I own a licence from here and I love it! The only downside is it does use alot of resources, or so people say, and some servers don't allow you to have it, but they are now making it with 6.1.0.2 that it uses .php on some pages to reduce bandwidth


vB
http://www.vbulletin.com

I don't own a licence for this one yet, but will be buying one soon seeing that my new host for a new site i'm making doesn't allow ubb, and they would recomend vB so I thought ah what the heck I'll try the thing out. Sounds pretty good, and is fairly nice to the server usage i hear.

Frank

I have installed more than 5 phpBBs.

Version 2 is comming very late. It's delay has forced me to use openbb and woltlab's software.

I have installed Beta versions of Version 2 but you are constantly changing even database so it is not possible to use Beta version too.

If you continue to postpone your release you will lose a lot of those who are interested in phpBB.

Mac




Originally posted by ffeingol
Actually if you have mod_gzip installed it does not mater if it's php, cgi or regular html as long as you have it configured correctly.

OTOH, I do agree with you that a php/mysql will not stress your server as much. Any of the cgi/flat file will put a strain on your server.

I'm very partial to phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com). V2.0 is looking very good.

Frank

Originally posted by sarmadys
If you continue to postpone your release you will lose a lot of those who are interested in phpBB.


Mac,

I'm sorry that you are not happy with the slow progress of phpBB v2.0. OTOH, I'm not sure how you can say that the release has been postponed. As far as I know, there has never been a release date even mentioned :D.

Frank

http://forums.xmbforum.com/
Fast, lots of features, easy to use, free.
Basicly any non SQL based board is going to suck resources like mad.
Non SQL based
Ikonboard (unless you get the MySQL based one)
UBB
YaBB
SQL based
VB
XMB
phpBB
Ikonboard (the MySQL based one)

I'd recommend phpBB.

The problem with MySQL-based boards is that they're inefficient and use a lot of CPU. In particular, a high-traffic VBulletin is all hell on a shared server. UBB is always an option, and because the files are HTML, the server load for viewing is almost zero. I've also seen UBBThreads, and I don't know anything about it, but I think it's pretty good.

I tested openbb (openbb.net) and I found it very very intersting.

I have not been able to test its server load but it has everything you need (gzip, ....) and its control panel is very complete.

I have installed more than 5 phpBBs but I prefer OpnBB now.

Mac

Originally posted by ShellBounder
The problem with MySQL-based boards is that they're inefficient and use a lot of CPU.

Hm, you are the first to say this.
:argue:
Do you prefer a flat file board? Is it efficient to search a huge flat file? Or is it efficient to search a small index?

I'm a bbs junkie. I've installed UBB, Ikonboard, Phpbb, XMB, OpenBB, and Burning Board (Woltlab). It really depends on what you're looking for in a board. I'm a designer at heart, so layout/graphics matter more to me than server performance (although that's important too). But anyway, here's my fifty cents:

UBB - boo. I hated hacking it. That board is so...1997. But I still use UBBDev to steal their icons sometimes. :D

Ikonboard - great cgi board, but a bit slow at times in terms of performance. A bit buggy. One day I added a forum and the rest of my forums got shuffled around for no reason (version 3 fixes this). The files themselves are easy to hack to your liking. The control panel for version 2.19 is okay, but version 3 is even better. When I tried the "stable" version 3 it was so buggy I had to degrade. I've used this board the longest, and what I liked best was compared to UBB, it was free and came with the more popular hacks installed, such as avatars and messengers. You can also add smilies with ease. In addition, it was pretty easy to add additional hacks. But for some reason the search function doesn't really work. It just keeps parsing (?) and doesn't get anywhere.

Phpbb - One of the most popular bbs scripts out there. Support very helpful and friendly. Board layout ugly as hell. When I edited the php files to make a better-looking layout, I encountered some sloppy coding such as CALLPADDING and CELLSPACING. The admin panel is clunky. However, loading time is extremely fast. For a person who knows nothing about php/mySQL, phpbb was easy to set up and was easy to add hacks. Version 2 looks nice, but it's taking forever for them to release it, so I moved on.

XMB - Clean layout, admin panel a bit of an improvement over phpbb's, but still primitive. I haven't had the chance to play around with it as much as I've liked. Adding themes was easy (this is also a phpbb feature). If you want to see an extremely hacked xmb, visit my online sis, Dodo at board.regretless.com (http://board.regretless.com).

OpenBB - vBulletin-esque layout. The control panel is great. I can edit every aspect of the board, as well as the admin panel. This board is great for the designer 'cause it's all about control :) Unfortunately, I decided not to use this one because I had trouble making private forums. I would check no access for guests over and over again, but as a guest I could still log in.

Burning Board (Woltlab) - my current board, this one has alot of potential. It has a combination of openbb and vbulletin's layout, and the admin panel is pretty complete. I looked at it through phpmyadmin, and I wasn't intimidated by it :) To edit the board interface, you have to dig through the .htm files. This was a big thing, there were like, 500 files in the zip, a bunch of them html files. It is a German board, and you will encounter some words they forgot to translate, but it can easily be fixed.

Lain,

It was great to see someone who have used all of them.

And your article was very interseting to me and I accept all of it.

But you say you have chosen woltlab's burning board at last?

I must admit that its appearance is great but I do not like it's admin interface. Also it's english version is Beta yet (however its final german version is ready now).

As I told later I prefer OpenBB because of its Admin interface.

Mac

XMB - Clean layout, admin panel a bit of an improvement over phpbb's, but still primitive. I haven't had the chance to play around with it as much as I've liked. Adding themes was easy (this is also a phpbb feature). If you want to see an extremely hacked xmb, visit my online sis, Dodo at board.regretless.com.


XMB1.05 is way way way out of date, look at 1.5RC4 (I know where RC5 is, and it cuts the time down by about 50%)
Now you can edit almost everything from the web, including the templates. The code is clean enought. A little buggy, not upto VB's quality (yet) however most bugs are fixed within 24 hours...

http://www.devnet.info/xmb/

I'd just like to point out that the boards I'm still using are phpBB, XMB, and Burning Board (Woltlab).

I've only had a couple of experiences with YaBB. The recent would be when a friend opened an account at xorbit, which I think uses YaBB. Even with around 30-something members and only 8 of them active, the board still loaded slow for me.

sarmadys, I do like using Woltlab's board over OpenBB. I don't know why, but probably because I'm getting tired of installing boards :D

Thejavaman1, thanks for the info. I'm probably going to upgrade because I recently am experiencing problems with the U2U. It keeps popping up and there are no messages.

A good rule of thumb is to estimate how many members you have for your board and how active they're gonna post. If it's only 20-something members, then a cgi board wouldn't be too bad. But if you have some money to spend, then vBulletin is your best bet.

Lain

1- I installed both OpenBB and Burning Board on the same server but it seems burning board is slower than OpenBB.

I am not sure if this is because of slow code (SQL etc) or volume of files being downloaded on my 56k connection.

What is your experience.

2- The most important point for me (even more than bandwidth usage) is server load.

How can I measure and compare server load on two boards.

I think OpenBB has better performance and less CPU load. Who has tested this and is sure of results?

Mac