creating message boards

[lorikelley66]

We have a customer requesting a message board on their website. I have never created one before, and would like info on what it entails. Does it require heavy coding, like in ASP, or can it be done in Dreamweaver? Also I have seen numerous advertisements for "free" customizable message board hosting, but am very wary of freeware and all the other "freebies" that seem to piggyback into my registry. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Easywebdev]

Theres a freeware discussion board called phpbb that is pretty good.
If you need a demonstration, you are using it here. :)

http://www.phpbb.com

There are other free boards such as invision power board, yabbse, punbb etc. But of them all, I would recommend this one.

For a paid solution take a look at http://www.vbulletin.com

These boards run on a webserver and will not be going anywhere near your pc's registry.

[beveeg]

I have used both phpbb and invision board and vbulletin. I really like them all.. I currently have phpbb up and running on one of my sites now.

I recently found another board that is really nice.. I like all the features of it. Kinda an all in one board. It offers not only the forum but an annoucements page for special announcements and news from the company administrators. A chat room. A downloads link for anything you offer to be downloaded. A Links page and more.

Check it out here
http://www.maxwebportal.com/

It comes with easy server install instructions and will not touch your registry.

Hope this helps as well

[Bluevoodu]

We have used many message boards with our site:
www.egameaddicts.com.

We have been on Ezboard (this is a good service IF you do not want the hassle of having it on your own webserver. Be ware, they can be somewhat slow, make sure you pay for the gold service for no ads, and 1 big bummer.... the URL does not coordinate with your site URL).

We tried PHPBB.... but that was a little slow, we ran across a lot of errors using MS SQL (instead of MySQL). This is an ok board, most people like it.... but we did not.

Vbulletin is good, it can have too many options at times for the users....

Our favorite (best for last) is the SMF boards (Simple Machines Forums). They run on MySQL.
They are VERY fast, have lots of options for the Admin, advanced IP searches and more.
www.simplemachines.org

The simple machines team used to be the YABBSE team.
I highly suggest using the SMF forums, they are SUPER SUPER SUPER easy to upgrade, and very attractive with the 1st layout :)


†B†V†

[splinter]

SMF is a very good forum. I use it on Game HideOut.

I hate using the template systems. Can't wait until I get time to continue developing my own.

[AlexDP]

If you're looking for an ASP forum them WebWizForums is the best free forum software I have come across yet. It has lots features and includes a rich-text editor. It was very easy to set-up (however I have been using Toast Forums and need to find some way to move all members and posts over before I can use it properly).

Toast Forums is a skinable ASP forum. It lacks in A LOT of functions, especially moderator ones. I am using Toast on the moment and all works fine, very easy set-up but lacks some wanted functions.

Alex