Which Forum software is best?

[troonguy]

Hi

Thinking about setting up a closed forum for our members on the website hosting.

I had heard that there can be some security problems with phpBB forums

Have not used any type of forum before on our website hosting. Does anyone have advice of the best forum softwere to use and which is user friendly and easy to manage?

Thanks for your help
Simon

[Ryan]

The older versions of PhpBB probably had some security problems and were prone to hacking. I would say vBulletin is by far the best forum software available today. The possibilities are endless as far as administration at vBulletin is concerned. It's setup is pretty easy... just follow the given instructions and you are good to go.

[eUKhost.com]

As of now there's no possible way to hack a PHPBB forum on any of our linux cpanel servers. We have all security rules in place to ensure frustration for kids of hacking world.

You can start with phpbb forum as of now as vbulletin would cost much more. Once you make your forum successful you can upgrade to vbulletin for additional features.

[troonguy]

Hi

Thanks for your helpful replies

Does it cost to use phpBB forums as well

Is the one in fantastico the best one to install and do you think it is easy to install

Thanks
Simon

ps. also thinking of a blog for the website hosting as well!!

[Ryan]

Hi Simon,

It does not cost to use a phpBB forum as it is open source. You can install phpBB : Version : 2.0.22 with the help of Fantastico. phpBB2 is the successor to the highly popular phpBB opensource bulletin board system

For a blog, you can use WordPress:Version 2.1 in fantastico.

[izzetm]

I use myBB Forum software.Because it is free and easy.

[troonguy]

Originally Posted by Ryan

Hi Simon,

It does not cost to use a phpBB forum as it is open source. You can install phpBB : Version : 2.0.22 with the help of Fantastico. phpBB2 is the successor to the highly popular phpBB opensource bulletin board system

For a blog, you can use WordPress:Version 2.1 in fantastico.

Hi Ryan

Thanks for your reply

Is the phpBB2 forum also free?

If so, is there a place that people can see it working?

Actually, I don't mind paying a little money for a forum setup, if it makes for easy setupa nd use and especially if it is user friendly for vistitors

Any thoughts/comments will be welcome
regards
Simon

[eUKhost.com]

Best place to check phpbb forums working is www. phpbb.com/phpBB

If you wish to see more forums running on phpbb then browse through www. phpbb.com/phpBB and you will see many existing users of phpbb forum.

[Ben]

Originally Posted by troonguy

Hi Ryan

Thanks for your reply

Is the phpBB2 forum also free?

If so, is there a place that people can see it working?

Actually, I don't mind paying a little money for a forum setup, if it makes for easy setupa nd use and especially if it is user friendly for vistitors

Any thoughts/comments will be welcome
regards
Simon

phpBB is absolutely free.

My favourite forum software is phpBB. I have phpBB for my forum.

[hypnoticstate]

Personally my favourite choice is Simple Machines Forum, its so powerful, the out of the box experience puts phpbb to shame.

[hairyfreak]

MyBB is an excellent, free forum script. I believe that it was written by some programmers who used to work on vBulletin. As such, I have been told that it has excellent security features and is very secure.

The following URL has a rather large list of both free and commercial forum scripts:

hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Discussion_Boards/index.html

[Andrew Burrage]

Originally Posted by hypnoticstate

Personally my favourite choice is Simple Machines Forum, its so powerful, the out of the box experience puts phpbb to shame.

I have to agree, I actually chose it because it was ready to install from fantastico and can be bridged (as in share users) with coppermine (photo gallery). I have been very pleased with it so far.

[anilshiv1]

Well phpbb had some hacking problems but have you ever tried phpbb3 but any the best paid forum software is vBulletin that is the best then IPB but if you don t have money to invest i would say that phpbb3 is the best free forum software

[hairyfreak]

I believe that the hacking problems have all been resolved with the newest releases of the phpBB forum software. The script is still free and although I haven't used it myself for a while, the new website hosting looks excellent. I have been told that it is much improved since the last versions, but have yet to try it myself.

I urge you, however, to search through the website hosting I posted above and try to find a script that suits your needs and appeals to you.

[fgames1]

vbulletin from jelsoft ,and ibp from invision power board is the best forum out there for your website hosting even though is cost much but is less spam and great security

[247h]

Originally Posted by Andrew Burrage

I have to agree, I actually chose it because it was ready to install from fantastico and can be bridged (as in share users) with coppermine (photo gallery). I have been very pleased with it so far.

I too am a huge fan of SMF and have integrated one forum with Coppermine (all the others, not yet). SMF also has some great conversion utilities for other popular forum software. The other area where it really scores is Help — everything is described with graphics and most of the links in the pics work in the way the forum does. From what I've seen of phpBB and vBulletin they're far less user-friendly.

As a forum user I much prefer SMF over vBulletin, which has a few odd quirks I really hate (and I've whinged about a couple that affect this forum), but as I have no admin experience of vBulletin I can't offer a comparison or even know whether it's worth paying for — I'd be interested to hear an unbiased comparison between the two, admin-wise.

I've installed phpBB3 for testing but I can't imagine I'd even want to switch away from SMF nowadays — yes it's better but I still don't think it compares with SMF.

Finally, the one thing that disappoints me with all the forum software I've used is the search tools and how basic they are — quite pathetic in some cases! At least phpBB3 has some decent guidance:
"Place + in front of a word which must be found and - in front of a word which must not be found. Put a list of words seperated by | into brackets if only one of the words must be found. Use * as a wildcard for partial matches".
Whereas SMF uses this concise example: e.g. Orwell "Animal Farm" -movie
As for vBulletin, check it out — doesn't tell you what you can use and doesn't even seem to support the -exclude function!

[Eidolon]

Originally Posted by fgames1

vbulletin from jelsoft ,and ibp from invision power board is the best forum out there for your website hosting even though is cost much but is less spam and great security

Generally using HRI on registration and requiring users to validate their email address prevents spam. Security wise I think whichever you choose it in part relies on the end user to check for available updates, and not using easy to guess logins.

(OK cheap plug time...)
Just thought I'd mention ikonForums http://www.ikonforums.com.

[cii-tech]

Hi, I just joined the forum.
Can anyone tell me how to install phbb2 forum? I installed yabb which was in fantastico.
And also can i upgrade it so the Topics and members dont get affected?

[CftxP]

I thought that it's also in Fantastico! And I think that that's a more upgraded version of PHP. I might be wrong though!

[DPS Computing]

Originally Posted by cii-tech

Hi, I just joined the forum.
Can anyone tell me how to install phbb2 forum? I installed yabb which was in fantastico.
And also can i upgrade it so the Topics and members dont get affected?

You can install it through Fantastico. It is under Bulletin Boards.