Suggestions for forum software please

Just did a search of this and All forums for any previous but all I found was this rather scary thread.

I would be starting off just with normal cheapo shared hosting like my website is.

So any suggestions for a reasonably easy to administer and free or cheap product please?

WordPress is a good platform. Check the WordPress site for available forum plugins. WordPress also allow you to set up a test site to muck about in.

I don't think ease of administration will come into it! Can you imagine yourself doing all the "admin" type jobs the owners and moderators have to do on this site.

phpbb3 is decent. Better than phpbb2 anway.

I would be starting off just with normal cheapo shared hosting like my website is

Keep in mind things like:

php / mysql support
windows or linux based
number of databases
lots more to think of - do lots of 'hosting comparison' browsing and see what they're all offering, read up on it to see if it's what you want/need etc.

Thanks to the three of you so far.

I looked what Tsohost have available:-

phpBB 3.07-PL1
Simple Machines Forum 1.1.11
XMB Forum 1.9.11.05

I've just been having a play with SMF and I'm quite impressed.

I had a go with WordPress about 18 months ago and somehow didn't get the hang of it. Maybe it was me at the time?

Any opinion on SMF compared to your suggestions, and perhaps I should try again with WordPress?

TBH if you're looking for ready to go, no theme changing, Wordpress is fine. Customisation will require some digging around in all the files, or you might find a theme which suites you.

Just a link for information you might find useful.

http://www.forum-software.org/

That looks brilliant alex, thanks. I must remember to have a saucer of salt next to me when I browse that site though , as with all comparators.

That's fine with me. Just don't leave your research till late evening in case you run out of salt, as the shops would be closed.

Edited by deleted (Thu 16-Sep-10 13:38:03)

If you ever change your mind and become willing to pay, vBulletin is by far the best forum software about and is well worth the money IMO.

I like SMF forums. I use 1.1.11. I tried phpBB and found it more difficult to use, despite it being the more popular. I have an SMF forum set up and ready to go with a view to having it replace a Yahoo Group. Yahoo Groups are going through some changes, including a hugely vociferous backlash from users (owners and moderators mainly) who objected to the Facebook look. Some have looked elsewhere and I have looked a GroupSpaces, where there is a forum feature. It is nowhere near as good as proper forums though - nowhere near so configurable and customisable as, say SMF is which all its mods.

Thanks Rob.

This sank into obscurity when I went on holiday, and during that time I realised my possible forum site could very easily leave me open to be sued for libel. So it is still on hold while I think what to do.

Worse - I can't for the life of me find where on my computer I was experimenting with SMF !

No problem Bob,

Would your forum be a sort of extension to your website? Although the potential is always there for libel, on the face of it I can't really see where/how you could run into problems. I just read a thread on the SMF Community forum after putting 'libel' into the search box, and it featured someone who ran a medical problem forum. There was naming and shaming of Drs occuring when the owner tried to widen the discussion, rather than trying to forge better links with Drs. They had to issue a change to the rules banning naming/shaming with non-compliance resulting in instant, permanent ban. That was three years ago.

I have a Yahoo Group for a medical condition. It is not for Dr bashing (it does no good to alienate) but to raise awareness. I moderate newbies too. I should say that it gets few visitors, unfortunately, but little flurries of activity every now and then.

Did you install an instance of SMF into a folder on your webspace from CPanel? If so you should be able to find it easily.

Thanks for that as well .

I'm afraid the idea was a little more likely to be defamatory though, if people got too serious rather than light-hearted. It wasn't for robertos website.

I think you are right - it would have been through CPanel.

The question now is on which of my several domains .... [groan]

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 29-Oct-10 18:22:50)

I'd definitely recommend SMF over phpBB.

Having used both as a complete newb to running forums, SMF is by far the easier to setup and maintain. There's something just non-intuitive about the phpBB admin interfaces - although it does have a lot of bells and whistles.

I have mine in a sub-domain of my only domain!

Tsohosts look very reasonable I must say and a god bit more professional than mine. I'd quite like another couple of domains as the name I have is a bit tof a mouthful. If I were to buy one or two more from Tsohosts, do they let me point the domains away to my site, so to speak. Umm I've gone a bit off topic

Also I tried phpBB and found SMF easier to deal with.

I need a bit more info about where your domain and site is hosted and why you wouldn't move it to Tsohost like I did all mine.

Yes you can forward a domain to another, with two or three options which off-hand I forget. I have a couple doing that, with the fact it ends up elsewhere not apparent to the viewer. IIRC it can be set to just transfer and show the existing one instead.

Drop me a PM with more info and I'll check the settings etc. I possibly won't reply tomorrow as we have two furniture deliveries and I will be expected to leave this thing alone!

SMF 2.0 is getting dangerously close to going gold; although the RC1 release was considerably more stable than most software full releases and they are now up to RC4.

If you thought SMF 1.1 is good, 2.0 is a very, very impressive step forward - it's what they are running on their own forums.

Thanks .

It's definitely on the back-burner at the moment though.

FYI:

http://www.forummatrix.org/

Compare features etc.


Also, since I'm giving links to comparatives, have a distro chooser linky:

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php

Thanks also.

The first one looks my sort of thing . Not so sure about the second.

I spent hours setting up a great forum using Joomla and a plugin called Kunena Forums, but kept getting spammed by rogue signups. If you can find a decent Captcha plugin i think it would be a great forum software

In reply to a post by micksharpe:

WordPress is a good platform. Check the WordPress site for available forum plugins. WordPress also allow you to set up a test site to muck about in.

Wordpress is the blogging CMS. Not fit for a forum at all.
phpBB may be a good choice.