spec me a free forum :D

Psypher5 · 18 Jun 2006 at 12:51

Howdo!

Looking for a backbone for my CS:S Clan, in the form of a good stable, customisable/skinable, adminable overall top forum. A mate of mine siggested Vbulletin, but, I'm not paying 40odd quid for a forum.

What I NEED out of the forum is for it to be skinned easily, and have good moderation/admin resources because maintenance will be key.

So, anyone?

Xez · 18 Jun 2006 at 12:54

http://www.phpbb.com/

Caged · 18 Jun 2006 at 12:55

Where are you hosting it?

Psypher5 · 18 Jun 2006 at 12:57

Forgot to mention, possibly anything other than phpbb

Used before, and yes its an option, wondered if there was anything else different really.

I have webhosting, thats no problem.

Chaos · 18 Jun 2006 at 14:08

SMF is a good free one -

http://www.simplemachines.org/

the_box · 18 Jun 2006 at 15:48

E-Blah Discussion Board is another 1 you could use

robmiller · 18 Jun 2006 at 15:51

SMF is pretty good, as is punBB.

uk_viper · 18 Jun 2006 at 16:01

another vote for punbb another fairly good one is YaBB http://www.yabbforum.com/

Psypher5 · 18 Jun 2006 at 16:19

Cheers people

Will take alook over them all later, Thanks again.

bigred · 18 Jun 2006 at 16:23

Take a look at http://getvanilla.com/ we use their forum on my colleges website, it's simple and does everything we need

Beansprout · 18 Jun 2006 at 18:23

Quite seriously don't overlook vBulletin. The community is bigger than the chambers of Heaven and the admin panel has more options than John Prescott's breakfast menu....if you're running a decently-sized community then you'll love it.

But if it's just a casual/small clan then one of the free forums is absolutely fine....SMF is, er, really simple and cool and YaBB is cool too....phpBB would be last in my list if it wasn't for the huge community it also has, so it's actually a good choice if you need lots of mods and so on.

Whichever you choose, the most important thing is to keep it up to date and make regular database backups

robmiller · 18 Jun 2006 at 18:51

Beansprout said:
Whichever you choose, the most important thing is to keep it up to date and make regular database backups

Or get one that isn't written by monkeys (ie not phpBB).

Beansprout · 18 Jun 2006 at 19:08

robmiller said:
Or get one that isn't written by monkeys (ie not phpBB).

Add IPB to that list, too

uk_viper · 18 Jun 2006 at 20:07

i thought IPB went fully commercial, tbh i wouldnt reccomend not using phpBB, the amount of holes inside it are un beleiveable

Elston · 18 Jun 2006 at 20:11

Beansprout said:
Add IPB to that list, too

Invision Power Board got worse since it went fully commercial!

Beansprout · 18 Jun 2006 at 20:47

Elston said:
Invision Power Board got worse since it went fully commercial!

Tell me about it. Me & a govt agency have some major beef with them but rather than bother persuing or getting poncy about it, we switched to vBulletin :cool:

Dj_Jestar · 18 Jun 2006 at 22:23

I've used vanilla before, tis cool but still quite 'young' atm.

uk_viper · 18 Jun 2006 at 22:31

in the end depends on how many users are going to use it, how busy its gonna get, whether you want it to lead a good and professional look on your site, i have an owned VBulletin licence, only cost me £91 but it's very worth it

Psypher5 · 18 Jun 2006 at 22:36

It's only for clan use. So about 30-50 if were lucky

Still looking through the links, thanks guys.

Sorry for wrong forum. Thought forum software was..software