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Anyone Recommend a Good Forum Software?

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Alcsl

Alcsl

Free Member
Jan 25, 2008
202
36
Nottinghamshire
Morning guys,

We're looking at integrating a forum into one of our existing websites and see there's lots of choice out there. Could anyone from their own experience recommend a good quality, initially low-cost forum provider/software that isn't too difficult to integrate?

Many thanks,

Al
 
if you're familiar with PHP / smarty the easiest and best to integrate will be http://www.phorum.org. it's really very flexible

vBulletin is the most feature based for a large user base. (paid though)

SMF or phpbb are okish free versions of vB.
 
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When I use forums I find that VB is much nicer to use as an end user - from memory it is pretty cheap to buy

I set up a PhbBB and it was pretty easy
 
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Thanks guys,

Do we need much in the way of coding knowledge to integrate any of these? Ideally we'd be looking for one that is an 'out the box' solution. I was looking a lefora but i'm not 100% on them yet.

We need the functionality to brand it, ideally keeping a top bar with links in place so people can moveto and from the forum and our existing website seamlessly, and also be able to integrate advertising into it easily enough. Might have to take a look at phpbb if that offers such things...
 
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If your visitors are likely to be web savvy and forum savvy, then I wouldn't recommend straying into any unknown scripts. chances are that they will know and expect certain behaviour, So any of the main ones mentioned will allow you to reskin brand and alter navigation etc.
 
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Free - SMF - I'd chose this all day long, very mature - good userbase and I just prefer it over phpBB

Paid - vBulletin

Again, make sure you keep it updated to avoid security problems later, and preferably put it behind an application firewall - espcially if it turns out to be very popular as it will just attract even more hack attempts. Forums attract a great deal of script kiddies, so please take security seriously :)
 
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Vanilla any day for me. I think it's a great platform where the focus is on the content and not huge signatures and avatars. Phpbb seems a little over the top, but it's still good. Heard it has had security problems in the past. Not sure about nowadays.
 
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I use Vbulletin as well: www.sheersoftware.com

But it's quite difficult to use as a beginner. In fact the original owner of the license had to sell it to me because it was very difficult for her to use. She found invisionpower much easier to use.

One of the problems with most free forum CMS is spam. You'll have a lot of work to do with spam!
 
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phpBB is great for free forum software, we host many of them and they fly along quite nicely. Great for any sized forum really. Take a look at the backend systems of each one on their website and decide which you like best really.
 
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