Let's have your thoughts on the best free forum software?
(phpBB, YaBB, IkonBoard, etc.)

I am sure there are many free forums out there, I would like to hear your thoughts on the ones that you have used.

I was going to make this a poll, but there are so many free forums out there, I might leave some of them out. So just post freely.

Thanks.

Here are my personal choices.
1) x-forum
2) phorum
3) phpBB
4) Ikonboard

Have a great day :)

Regards
Amar

I really like Ikonboard! It's very nice to setup and highly customizable.

My vote goes to phpBB.

OTOH, this seems to come up here over and over and over again. Try the search feature :D.

Frank

XMB Forum ( http://xmbforum.com ) is good.

Burning Board looks fantastic ( never tested it with a lot of posts/users though ) - http://www.woltlab.de/

I like IkonBoard v2.

I'm totally clueless about MySQL :eek: so I can't install any of those coolish PHP boards :bawling:

If you don't know much about mySQL then I highly recommend YaBB. It's a great board.

blah, its not as hard as you think :) . I'll be happy to help you setup a mysql script sometime. (If your host allows it)

I've heard YaBB is a resource hog :(

To further enhance WHT's search feature, I'll also vote for Burning Board on the strength that it's template-driven, the code is well-structured and the admin section is very thorough.

Don't be daunted by MySQL boards. Most of them are moving in that direction and setting them up (at least with Burning Board, phpBB, XMB) is practically brainless. Brainlessness is good! :D

Originally posted by blah
I'm totally clueless about MySQL :eek: so I can't install any of those coolish PHP boards :bawling:

I have to agree with the comment above. You really don't need to know anything about MySQL with most of the MySQL based boards. It just needs to be setup on your server and someone has to give you your id/password to access MySQL. After that it's usually just running some sort of install.php script that asks you questions.

Frank

No one mentioned openbb (openbb.net) and Burning Board (woltlab.de). They are both free and with very good appearance (very very better than phpBB and even phpBB2).


Mac

Originally posted by sarmadys
No one mentioned openbb (openbb.net) and Burning Board

Several people mentioned Burning Board actually ;)

And on that note, I use Burning Board, I think it's great, uses MySQL but requires prettymuch no PHP/MySQL Knowledge to set it up.

The catch is that all the customization stuff (www.wbbdev.com) is in German.


Is there anybody here that speaks German that wants to help me out? :D

http://www.vbulleting.com/
http://www.infopop.com/
http://www.openbb.net/
http://www.ikonboard.com/newindex.iB/
http://www.phpbb.com/
http://www.woltlab.com/en/projects.php?id=1
http://www.phorum.org/
http://forum.snitz.com/ (ASP board)
http://yabb.xnull.com/
http://yapboard.sourceforge.net/yapboard/list_boards.php
http://www.boardjuggler.com/
http://www.subjective.de/en/netzbrett/ (old style)
http://funkboard.sourceforge.net/
http://tubthumper.sourceforge.net/
http://dpbb.org/
http://www.insane-hq.org/loosethreads/
http://gnubbs.sourceforge.net/

Originally posted by ffeingol


I have to agree with the comment above. You really don't need to know anything about MySQL with most of the MySQL based boards. It just needs to be setup on your server and someone has to give you your id/password to access MySQL. After that it's usually just running some sort of install.php script that asks you questions.

Frank

hmm.. well once upon a time I tried to install phpnuke on f2s and then I don't know what happened :erm: I didn't know all the commands and things :confused:

Originally posted by Relyc


Several people mentioned Burning Board actually ;)

And on that note, I use Burning Board, I think it's great, uses MySQL but requires prettymuch no PHP/MySQL Knowledge to set it up.

The catch is that all the customization stuff (www.wbbdev.com) is in German.


Is there anybody here that speaks German that wants to help me out? :D

Relyc,
Check this site out: http://www.wbbhacks.com/

Originally posted by sarmadys
No one mentioned openbb (openbb.net) and Burning Board (woltlab.de). They are both free and with very good appearance (very very better than phpBB and even phpBB2).


I have OpenBB installed on a "play" server in the office. While it *looks* really good it does have a long way to go from the standpoint of features, database design and extensibility. I think the more experience the developers attain, the better it will be. I'm pulling for 'em. :)

Burning Board finally got a better English-language version out and that should only increase its appeal. Previously, installing it meant hours of editing the templates to improve the wording. Even with the new version that's been released, I think the queries could be sped up even more.

My vote goes for phpBB2. It looks almost as good if not berrer than VBullition

Yep, I admit it, I'm a bbs whore :)

Currently running Burning Board, PhpBB, and XMB. Previously used at one time or another: UBB, Ikonboard, OpenBB. Used Ikonboard and PhpBB the longest.

Support
PhpBB has the best support forums (in terms of quickness of responses), followed by Ikonboard, and Burning Board. Asked a question on OpenBB's support board, never got a reply, and I think my post was deleted. I have never used UBB or XMB's support forums. PhpBB support boards are really friendly :)

Installation
For the newbie, Ikonboard is the easiest to install for cgi-boards. Once they get the hang of adding a database and stuff, then PhpBB, XMB are the easiest to install. Burning Board has hundreds (!) of files, so it takes longer to set up.

Board Loading Speed
PhpBB; XMB. Ikonboard and UBB are slower (of course). Haven't tested it extensively for Burning Board.

Control Panel
OpenBB has the best control panel, followed by Burning Board. Ikonboard 3's cp is pretty cool too. OpenBB is really customizable, I like that feature alot.

Layout
I like OpenBB and Burning Board's layout best. If you want icons and folders and stuff, steal them from UBB Dev, ha. PhpBB 1's layout is hideous, but version 2 is nice.

You Should Pick
Wait for version 2 of PhpBB. But if you are impatient, try Burning Board. It's pretty snazzy.

I think a lot of people get caught up in VBulletin and start thinking
"You have to pay for this one, well it has to be the best then"

Wow, so many free forums to choose from.

Anyone know of any free forum where I can customize to allow advertisements? (banner ads)

Something similar to WHT advertisement.

Thanks.

YaBB. I have ads around my Bass Fishing Forum

yeah, YaBB is great. But it takes up alot of your resources. Any others?

Originally posted by mantra
yeah, YaBB is great. But it takes up alot of your resources. Any others?


Well I was happy with Burning Board as is, but thanks to 'blah' I recommend it 100% :)

Burning Board takes around 30 seconds to install after you upload and add your database details to the config file. *Very* slick setup. The admin area is to die for. I've heard it's a little on the hungry side resource wise, though I've never tested it for that.

XMB is a very nice looking forum and easy to customize. The community for it has a few neat hacks too. A friendly group.

After a long look around for a forum I settled on those two as being the best IMHO. PhpBB2 seems to have a very nice one coming along

VB's probably still the most solid though.. As a commercial script they need to check and re-check things more as paying customers will naturally be pretty upset if you release a dog :)

I do have a feeling that once a forum moves to a commercial script they have to slow down on the 'experimental' stuff so development also slows... Remember when UBB was top'o'the pile

Greg Moore

I've narrowed it down to Burning Board and OpenBB...

Does Burning Board support sub-forums?

Thanks!

Of course

I certainly recommend Burning Board. It is hugely customisable, fast enough, has every feature you can think off and best of all free.

wbbhacks.com was launched by me along with a friend on the 27th of this month and we already have a decent database of hacks and we are working hard to translate all available hacks to english :)

You can also access Woltlab at woltlab.com.

LastActionHero

I like appearance of burning board and its capabilities but I think even its first release (this month) has lot of bugs.

Sometimes output pages contain wrong html that forces browser to warn you.

Also it has a lot of problem with email notifications. (I do not like its notifications format. I know I can customize them but in this way I must put everything away and start customizing all my time) Some notifications did not reach users (even PMs) and I am in doubt if it even sent them.

I worked a lot on it but finally installed phpBB 2.0 Pre RC1 today and moved messages and users to it using small convert program that I developped myself.

And now I am running ugly phpBB ( even phpBB 2.0 with its silver theme is ugly in comparison to VBulletin and Burnning Board) but I need correct functionality and ugly phpBB has it.

I also like XMB but it shows user emails to everyone and does not have PM capabilities otherwise it is very beautiful and I think more usable (with new MySQL version) than others.

Mac

i haven't tried that many, and i don't know enough to try all the php etc ones... i tried wwwboard and modified the heck out of it (ending up with lots of crashes, hehe), and the old rpgboard whose website has gone, it was not to my taste either. then i found ikonboard and i was happy at last :)

i'm still on ib2.1.9 right now, with a bunch of mods and hacks, and it serves the purpose very well :)

After reading all the posts, I am going to try OpenBB.

Any drawbacks of openbb.

Mantra

Someone on the board critisized openbb badly.

see

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=27637

Mac

I like appearance of burning board and its capabilities but I think even its first release (this month) has lot of bugs.

I diasagree with that. WBBHacks.com is using version 1.1.0 as it main board and we haven't come across any bug yet. Some users experience difficulties with the image tag in the BBCode on their boards but that is a trivial problem considering that this is first major release.

Sometimes output pages contain wrong html that forces browser to warn you.
This is the first time I have heard of such a problem. Did you edit the templates in a WYSIWIG editor?

It has a lot of problem with email notifications. (I do not like its notifications format. I know I can customize them but in this way I must put everything away and start customizing all my time) Some notifications did not reach users (even PMs) and I am in doubt if it even sent them.

Again this is the first time I have heard about it. Never had any problem with notifications not reaching. I agree the format is not exactly super but it take less than 5 minutes to customise the email format. PM notification is not present by default in WBB but there is a hack available at WBBHacks.com


For me the biggest feature is the extensive customisability that WBB offers. I don't know who you go about customising vB but I believe WBB is comparable to vB in every respect.