free forum software ?

[picassoface]

Hi. Anyone know of any free forum downloads that don't use their own ads but allow you to put your own google ads and banners up ?
Thanks

 

[james2002]

PHPbb and smf are in fantastico and pretty easy to install.

 

[picassoface]

phpBB requires these :
A webserver or web hosting account running on any major Operating System with support for PHP
A SQL database system, one of:
FireBird 2.0 or above
MySQL 3.23 or above
MS SQL Server 2000 or above (directly or via ODBC)
Oracle
PostgreSQL 7.x or above
SQLite 2
PHP 4.3.3 or above with support for the database you intend to use. The optional presence of the following modules within PHP will provide access to additional features, but they are not required.
zlib Compression support
Remote FTP support
XML support
Imagemagick support
GD support

Does the paid forum software require these ?

 

[draggar]

They don't require much to run - I've used phpBB and SMF. Personally I like SMF because it has a function built in to easily add in plugins (and there are a lot of them). I'd say use the latest beta release of SMF - anti-spam is much better and much better features.

Most hosting accounts support these, I think you'd have to go out of your way to find one that doesn't. php support is pretty basic and most give you at least one databas (usually MySQL).

1&1 and Host Monster both can run phpBB and SMF (and I think that is pretty close to the lowest end of hosts). I don't think many other hosting companies will have an issue running these.

 

[picassoface]

Thanks Great news...
I want to do it for ElderPetCare.com

 

[talas]

phpBB
Discuz

 

[south]

My favorite free ones:

Phorum
PunBB / FluxBB

Check out opensourcecms.com for more.

 

[dejanlesi]

I for one favor SMF. It has a great community around it with a lot of add ons, plugins and anything that you wish.. And like draggar said the modifications are easy to install.

 

[cursal]

Thanks for that link south!

Some real gems in there for the opensource minded

 

[hunnam]

I use PHPBB but liked the SMF forum better, find it difficult to use addons for PHPBB.

My only issue with SMF was that it got hacked a lot, hopefully the security is a lot better.