What is a good free Forum to install on ones website

[Steve Rupe]

Just a simple Forum to discuss what is on the website. Who has a recommendation?

[Publisher Bucks]

Mybb.com

Its basically what Vbulletin used to look and work like before they added a bunch of stupid shit trying to make it into more of a 'social community system' and begin charging more for it.

Oh, its also FREE and has a whole slew of plugins like spam control, skins, etc, etc.

[NatalieMojoHost]

Check out Vanilla Forums as well. It has some limitations but is generally easy to manage and monitor.

Oh crap looks like they no longer have an open source option...

[hamiltonsteele]

Originally Posted by Publisher Bucks

Mybb.com

Its basically what Vbulletin used to look and work like before they added a bunch of stupid shit trying to make it into more of a 'social community system' and begin charging more for it.

Oh, its also FREE and has a whole slew of plugins like spam control, skins, etc, etc.

Oh I hated Mybb
I found that the plugins are haphazard and the administrative end is very non-intuitive.
So I keep going back to phpbb because it's just cleaner.

Regardless, forums would come back from the dead if only someone would make a damn app!

[brassmonkey]

phpbb u ok?

[Publisher Bucks]

Originally Posted by hamiltonsteele

Oh I hated Mybb
I found that the plugins are haphazard and the administrative end is very non-intuitive.
So I keep going back to phpbb because it's just cleaner.

Regardless, forums would come back from the dead if only someone would make a damn app!

The only issue I have with phpbb is that historically, phpbb based message forums tend to not get as many posts/threads as VBulletin based ones did.

Back in the day, if you had a forum and wanted to be taken seriously, especially in the adult industry, you NEEDED to have a VBulletin forum. Whether that is still the case I don't know but, I have to admit that I do like the look and feel of a VBulletin based forum vs. phpbb one myself which is honestly the only reason I use Mybb on my boards presently.

Ron at Board Tracker (if he still owns it) would definitely be in a great position to setup an app for message board interaction

[hamiltonsteele]

Originally Posted by Publisher Bucks

The only issue I have with phpbb is that historically, phpbb based message forums tend to not get as many posts/threads as VBulletin based ones did.

Absolutely true and I have no idea why it makes such a big difference. I mean from the
end user perspective they're all pretty much the same thing except for some measure
of graphical layout.

Originally Posted by Publisher Bucks

Ron at Board Tracker (if he still owns it) would definitely be in a great position to setup an app for message board interaction

I took a crack at creating an app about a year ago. Needles to say that I genuinely suck
ass when it comes to everything technical.

But just the same, we really do need someone to create an app that will work with all the
independent forums.

[ZTT]

If you have 1k of hard drive space, this is the perfect forum:
https://nerdparadise.com/programming/phpforum

If you can push the boat out to 5k, you have many more options, including:
https://github.com/nicbou/tinybbs

And for real extravagance you can have this at just under 10k:
https://github.com/Xeoncross/forumfive

Those aside - and the serious point is that forums aren't necessarily complicated, depending on what you want - I always disliked forums like phpbb and vbulletin, which all look the same to me, ugly and cluttered with info nobody cares about.

Since I prefer lightweight/low-end/no-nonsense stuff I always liked FluxBB:

https://fluxbb.org

a form/fork of which used to be used by Facebook in its early days (but don't let that put you off).

I really loved this one though:

NoNonsense Forum

Both of those are ancient but still around/seemingly unhacked/exploited and pretty lightweight.

If I'd ever got around to doing a forum they're the two I'd have chosen from, or maybe just written a bloated 15k one myself.

[Steve Rupe]

Thanks for the input guys!!!