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What is the best message board software?
October 7, 2004 4:03 PM Subscribe

I need a message board / discussion forum for an online community that's been evicted from its old home. What's the best message board software out there, and are there particular extensions or services I need on my server in order to run it? It doesn't have to be free software, but it can't be super-extravagant, either.
posted by Chanther to computers & internet (8 comments total)

well, how much functionality do you need? Just the basics, or with categories and polls and crap?
posted by Hackworth at 4:19 PM on October 7, 2004

What was the "old home" using? The users will probably be most comfortable with something similar.
posted by majick at 4:23 PM on October 7, 2004

Don't need too many bells and whistles. Not sure if the old place had categories (if so, they were never used), and it had polls but the users rarely used them, and would be able to live without them. Mostly I just need the basics - threads, post counts, etc. I think the users enjoyed having avatars, custom user titles, signature lines, smilies and the like, and they used the UBBCode for italics and such. But the absence of any of those would probably not be a deal-breaker.

The old place was an Ikonboard forum. It's a fairly small user group - about 50 or so posters, maybe 1000 posts per month total.
posted by Chanther at 4:57 PM on October 7, 2004

I've found phpBB to be a nice, free bulletin board for basic setups.
posted by mathowie at 4:58 PM on October 7, 2004

phpBB has probably one of the easiest setups out there. Very generic, but since everyone's been on one before, it's immediately familiar.

Personally though, I found phorum to be a good choice for someone who knows enough about mucking about in the code in order to customize it to the hilt. good for it you really don't want the generic bulletinboard look and feel.
posted by Hackworth at 5:52 PM on October 7, 2004

vBulletin is used by a number of different forums I frequent. It's not fabulous, but it's easy to use and does polls and stuff if you want it to.
posted by biscotti at 7:19 PM on October 7, 2004

punbb is a really fast, simple message board
posted by mrcircles at 10:28 PM on October 7, 2004

I'll 3rd phpBB. Free, and easy setup.
posted by yoga at 4:11 AM on October 8, 2004

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What is the best message board software? October 7, 2004 4:03 PM Subscribe

What is the best message board software?
October 7, 2004 4:03 PM Subscribe