With all the upgrades to forums being released, which one would you say is the best free forum available today?

Well it depends on what features your looking for, along with what scripting language/backend you want the forum to be coded in. I can recommend the following 3 forums which use php/mysql and are free

www.openbb.net
www.phpbb.com
http://www.woltlab.de

I spent an hour trying to find that post new topic button on phpBB and I noticed that other people have been having the same problem.

I'd probably add YaBB in there aswell. Don't all these forums have similar features anyway? XMB comes with Cpanel but I never hear it being mentioned. What's wrong with it?

XMB
I believe that they are closing down.

XMB Team have gone different ways.....

IBForums (http://www.ibforums.com/) is being produce at the moment, should be very good.. I'm using phpBB2 for the moment.

I used XMB for a customer site it got hacked over and over and over again, and there was nothing (In my power) to do about it till i just secured the DIR all together but im sure you dont want to do that... the one that comes with cpanel is a BETA version...

I have posted about xmb before and all its secuirty risks!

vbulletin is the top of the line i believe/ it cost some money but its worth it.

Cheers

:stickout

Phpbb2 is great. Its looking better and better everyday. Try the new RC2, its simply great. They have also come up with new mods (formerly known as "hacks") http://mods.phpbb.com.
Its also much easier to set up now. You dont have to mess with the config files too much.
To get the RC2 though you have to go to sourceforge.

I would suggest wbb http://woltlab.de . Check out this site I host that runs a hack (mods and addons, not hackers) community for wbb. http://wbbhacks.com . It is very custimisable and scalable.

I must admit phpBB2 does look a lot better. Why did they change their name to phpBB2?

How do all these forums differ in terms of features?

Originally posted by perpetual
Why did they change their name to phpBB2?


Because its version 2? As far as features, you just have to play with each forum to discover what each has that differs from the others.

Okay, I've downloading phpBB2 but it doesn't come with any installation instructions - and the config.php file is BLANK. What's the story?

Originally posted by perpetual
Okay, I've downloading phpBB2 but it doesn't come with any installation instructions - and the config.php file is BLANK. What's the story?

The config.php file is automatically modified when you run the install.php file. Upload all the files, make sure you make the config.php read and writable, then run the install.php.

Here are a few links for other phpBB2 info:

Official download site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpbb/
phpBB2 Dev Board: http://phpbb.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/
FAQ: http://phpbb.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6166
Mods to phpBB and phpBB2: http://mods.phpbb.com/

If I remember correctly you just need to untar/unzip the package into your webroot, and go to /install.php. It should build the config file for you. I may be wrong, as it has been a few months since I last installed it.

-Dan

Doh!
Got beaten to it. :)

sounds easy enough.. wonder why it doesn't work...:confused:

I personally like Teemz (http://www.teemz.com/) because it is a nice and small forum.

For a more big forum I like Open Bulletin Board (http://www.iansoft.net/) .

openBB looks good.

Can someone tell me why vBulletin is so great? What features does it have that other free forums lack?

btw. I got phpBB2 working.. stupid parse errors made me have to edit the install.php file manually. Not sure if I stuffed it up myself previously or it came like that but if anyone else has problems with line 758, replace the last ) with a ; instead.

Originally posted by perpetual
sounds easy enough.. wonder why it doesn't work...:confused:

Cuz there was a minor bug in the install.php in RC-2 (release canidate 2). If you search the phpBB 2 forum, you'll find the fix for it.

Or just wait for RC-3 ;)

Frank

Frank,

is the phpBB 2 forum the same as the phpBB forum? A link would be great.

http://phpbb.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/

thanks serve-you.

I don't hold much respect for people who let an installation bug get through on a release tho. You would have thought that installing the damn thing would have been one of the first things to be tested. :stickout

I think I had upgraded from RC1, but I don't remember any problems installing. You could also try the CVS build.

-Dan

I've already installed it. It was only that one parse error.

Originally posted by perpetual
Can someone tell me why vBulletin is so great? What features does it have that other free forums lack?
I haven't used all the free forums out there, so I could harly answer this question, but in general, vbull is a widely used paid product and with that comes a certain amount of expectation that the code be clean and working as delivered. Of course, vbull owners will tell you this isn't exactly the case, but they seem on top of fixes and the backend is great (can't think of many things it lacks other than a place to put hidden mod notes in each user's profile).

After using vbull, all I can say is that I'd wish for all the features of vbull in any other forum, both back and front end, and if there's something like that, well then this would be great.

The free forums are great, and have gotten better. Their main downfall seems to be more bugs, sometimes inconsistent websites (down, etc.), and some team member problems. i don't think it isn't anything that could apply to vbull however, it just hasn't happened to the degree of some of the free ones.

A long time ago (probably a year by now) I installed one of the better ones at the time, phpbb, and felt it had a long way to go. As I said, for free, even at the time I thought it was very good, just not very good enough for all forum applications (such as WHT). Since that time, from what I've seen, that particular one looks to be loads better (though I haven't installed it and played, but will be for a small project I was talked into doing). We'll see.

Overall, it seems there are a few free ones that really have a decent amount of features and ability compared to a year ago. Surely the gap has closed in, if not completely (as I said, I'm no expert on all the different ones available), I'm just not sure how close they all come.

<<Please post the URLs of the forums>>

HI!
Burning board is my choice... :)

It is a lovely peice of code

Have a great day :)

regards
amar

I like phpBB :)

I used to support http://www.ikonboard.com - but after the programmer left to work on his new project, I will be supporting http://www.ibforums.com once a stable version is available.

You can see a working version of ikonboard with 500+ members at http://www.fan-studio.com - it gets the job done - can't wait to see IBforums.

Originally posted by bobcares
HI!
Burning board is my choice... :)

It is a lovely peice of code

Have a great day :)

regards
amar

Problem....No longer a free board.

Marty: I almost could't beleive it! Looks like they're planning to charge up to $85 for the wBB 2... :cartman:

I have a site which is using wBB 1.1.1 and it proved to be a lot better than phpBB 1.4x branch. But phpBB 2 is coming along nicely, so we'll see...

Ales

In my personal opinion in regards to vBulletin and the freeware applications out there . . . vBulletin charges for it software and so, the developer is now working on faster and stable releases when they get an incentive such as making money.

The make up of vBulletin's community is something else to consider. If everyone there is a paid user, that means they are making some sort of revenue on their site or they are serious about making a succesfull community which seperates those who use "free" boards and who pay for boards.

At vBulletin, alot of the conversations are intelligent (I like to hang in the PHP/MySQL areas :)).

I was a board developer myself, actually started BlazeBoard under GPL until it became too abusive and alot of the "free" applications are using some of it's functions that is essentially the core pieces of a board, such as template functions. Becoming frustrated that after hard work doesn't pay off with those who think they can abuse copyrights and remove a simple little copyright off their board.

I think that's why many freeware community applications aren't as good. The programmers are willing to put in the time necessary, but it can't be controlled once it's distributed. phpBB didn't look too good in v1.4, but with the new phpBB v2, it looks snazzy, but how complex would it be to change some layouts or templates. So I haven't seen many sites changing the default layout because of this.

Paying close attention to their work, I notice they are comitted to a robust core and not minding too much about adding the extra little features that could cause some over head. But they do have their jobs and lives to attend to, and so, they delay for an official release still has to come while others are very anxious on a portal extension to it. :) vBulletin is you get what you paid for IMHO.

Originally posted by Xanthis
phpBB didn't look too good in v1.4, but with the new phpBB v2, it looks snazzy, but how complex would it be to change some layouts or templates. So I haven't seen many sites changing the default layout because of this.


OK, first, I'm very biased to phpBB :D

I don't think many people have customized phpBB for a couple of reasons:

It's still just a Release Canidate. If you take the time and effort to customize it now, you'll prob. have to do it again when the program goes GA. That's just not worth it.
There is no documentation yet on the templates. Again, that's because it's a RC.
The theme that comes with the RC is somewhat complicated with a lot of CSS. It's a tad hard to follow if you're not really up on HTML, CSS etc.


I believe you'll see a lot of templates and customization as soon as phpBB goes GA. Or I could be totally wet :cartman:

Frank

Since the topic isn't about vBulletin, but about "Best Free Forum", I think that phpBB would win as their coders do alot of work optimizing certain slow downs in the script. It uses a database abstraction layer so you can be hosted on other RDBMS other than MySQL.

Still they take a while for each release and it's hard to say when the final release will be.

As for OpenBB, I don't think much effort went though in getting it where it's suitable for large sites or coded so that pages are generated quickly. If you have a small - medium sites, either would be suitable, but IMHO, I'd stick with phpBB since I've tagged along and watched their development since the very few days it first started... :)

The big bugs... and most of the smaller ones are all gone.;)

The install script is fabulous... very easy and quick!

Customizing the default Sub Silver theme is easier than ever (was a bit buggy still in RC-2) or grabbing up several others at their souce forge page.

If you aim to support and run totally free software, phpBB should be your choice for forums.

I will even install it for you, at no charge! :D

Peace...

Originally posted by Xanthis
Since the topic isn't about vBulletin, but about "Best Free Forum", I think that phpBB would win as their coders do alot of work optimizing certain slow downs in the script. It uses a database abstraction layer so you can be hosted on other RDBMS other than MySQL.


I've managed to run it on a PostgreSQL about two months ago when I first tried it. It seemd very nice. Never tried it on a production forum, though.

Which one is easiest to customize? Some of these forums have almost 100 files that need to be edited, quite ridiculous and time consuming.

Well, you can always customize colors :) I think that the more files to modify, the more combinations and uniqueness (is that a word?) a community becomes. Otherwise, one could snap a header and footer and call it customized.

IE, the co-branding board site I run snaps a header/footer which allows the content of the board enclosed in a graphical type setting.

So it's not really ridiculous to have "100 files" to modify, unless the script does a really poor job of handling header/footer that could snap content into. Then yea, I think that is ridculous.

Anyway, IMHO, phpBB still is better and that's from the view point of competiting GPL board at one time :) *hint*

Thanks for everyone's input! After reviewing all the boards, I finally settled on phpBB2 RC-3.

I don't think many people have customized phpBB for a couple of reasons:

I haven't changed the default template because I happen to like the colour scheme. I even tried to make the logo match it (still needs a bit of work tho)

http://www.JySE.com

I think you have made a very good choice.
Dont let the fact that I may of seemed to be a salesman pushing phpBB. As far as 'FREE' boards go, they are the best in all aspects.

What a breeze to install, to hey? ;)

Offer still stands to install for anyone free of charge.


All you seasoned programmers dont laugh at my lame attempt, a fellow has to get experience somehow, right? :D


snoooky~

Installation was a bit more complicated for me cos i originally had RC-2 which had the infamous bug and then upgraded to RC-3 when that came out.

RC-3 is quite easy to install though. But on the other hand, so is a lot of the other forums.

Offer still stands to install for anyone free of charge

installation is so easy that i doubt you'll get many ppl asking for help. Why don't you try for free template making? :) just a thought.