Best Free Forum?

[izwar]

as of now im going to go with PHP BB any other suggestions or critiques?

[Cutter]

I would agree with that. Despite its issues, you benefit from having a large user base for support which doesn't existing for other free forum packages.

[izwar]

what issues does it have?

[etech-martin]

There are a few other forum softwares out there like SMF and MyBB, but I think you have made good choice by going with phpBB.

[John]

Punbb (http://www.punbb.org/) is a great free forum.

[izwar]

thanks apprecieate, the input

[Emancipator]

phpbb is good but has the same limitations other free forums have. I got hacked 3 times which is why i finally went to vbulletin. Having a large community get hacked is painfull.

[izwar]

o dam, that kind of scares me lol, what exactly happened when you got hacked?

[Emancipator]

i had to spend a good day trying to find out how they got in and regain control of my forum. They emailed all my users a link to a porn site and redirected my forum to the porn site. So yeah I had 5,000 + members going "wtf".

[izwar]

WOW, that sucks. Well i just did some research on PHP BB and they ahve a lot of what seem like good security Modifications, so i think im just gonna install those once i get the forum running. They have a double admin login page, account freezing after 3 invalid attempts and a bunch of other stuff so hopefully that will help.


Is their no chance of this happening on V-Bulletin?

[Emancipator]

phpbb cant hold a candle to Vbulletin. phpbb is how i got hacked. vbulletin has never been hacked on my server.

[Elvie]

phpbb has caused me grief twice. The first time I was on a shared hosting server and someone had an outdated copy of phpbb running - it was hacked and every index.html file in everyone's account on the server was overwritten. That was the last kick I needed to get my own dedicated server.

The second time - I had installed it over the last year to try out on one my domains. It was hacked and associated php files were changed again. It also had more spoof signups from spammers than legit people.

Rant: I've now officially had it using other people's scripts for blogs and message boards. Too much spam, hacking, fake signups, etc. I have one active message board that I've had up for 6 years. I programmed it myself and it has never had any of these problems. Now I'm thinking that investing the extra time into programming features myself saves me a lot of time down the road.

[izwar]

Thank you for your information, im probably gonna go with V Bulletin now as i want to avoid these problems in the future. So the secuirty of vbulletin is good? no hacking problems you guys have had?

[Emancipator]

vbulletin is THE best forum software. You wont get it for free, but you get what you pay for. Free is not an option i usually even consider with something of this nature.

[izwar]

im gonna use php BB till i get the money to go with VB, ill just put on the extra security mods that php bb has in the mean time.

[Steelsun]

SMF is pretty good, with a helpful user and support base.

[eukhost]

I think phpbb is very good free forum.

[deronsizemore]

For free PunBB seems like the best I've found. I'm setting up a forum with it now. It's at www.oxtalk.com

For not free, obviously VBulletin is the best choice.

[Emancipator]

the best FREE forum software is punbb. I just installed it on two of my new sites and all i can say is wow. It meets all my requirements

- 2 minutes to install
- easy to use
- very modable.

So I take back what i said about phpbb. If you are going to buy go with vbulleting if you want free go punbb.

[Vinnie]

For free PunBB seems like the best I've found. I'm setting up a forum with it now. It's at www.oxtalk.com

I'm all about PunBB too. It's not as fully featured/bloated as VB but damn it's fast, and much easier to skin.

[deronsizemore]

and much easier to skin.


That is the one part I'm having some issues with. I consider myself good with html/css (no expert or anything, but not newb) and to me it just seems like their code is all over the place in the CSS file...does it seem like that to you? Maybe it's because it's a new product to me and I'm just getting used to it still. I've for the most part found every style that I needed to change through trial and error, but for example they have three different css files imported into the template. I'm using the Oxygen theme and it has base.css, oxygen.css, oxygen_cs.css and it's hard sometimes to find the style you're looking to change.

[Emancipator]

deron i thought the exact same thing till i sat back and took a deep breath and realized all I had to do was change 1 style sheet and update the tpl file and your done. Its actually super easy. I am happy to help you with any questions you may have. I love Punbb as well for its super easy styling options.

[deronsizemore]

deron i thought the exact same thing till i sat back and took a deep breath and realized all I had to do was change 1 style sheet and update the tpl file and your done. Its actually super easy. I am happy to help you with any questions you may have. I love Punbb as well for its super easy styling options.


I'll definitely take you up on that offer :D I take all the help I can get.

I'm not quite sure I understand what you're saying with updating one css file and then changing the template file?

Like what if there was a border around something and you wanted it removed. Would you not first have to find that border attribute in the correct css file and remove the border? How would you one css file in this situation and then update the template? My problem is that most everytime I need to remove a border, change a color, etc...I cannot even find that style in the stylesheet. I need to remove a border-top: 4x currently, and I've searched each stylesheet and there is no border-top in any of them. That's what's making me mad, you can't find anything.

Thanks