Free Forum software

[michaeln]

Hi All,

Can anyone sugest free forum software that is easy to install/configure. I have a website for Badminton players and would like to set up a iscussion forum aswell.

Thanks

Michael

[Direct1]

YaBB (Yet another Bulletin Board) and phpBB are a couple to look at...

http://www.yabbforum.com/

http://www.phpbb.com/

Good luck! :D

[fancyf]

ProBoards (http://proboards.com/) ; hosted on their server.

[rraehal]

I use phpbb as Direct1 posted earlier. It set up and upgraded for me fairly easy. I actually set it up when I was first learning how to use PHP and SQL servers.

[MJCfromCT]

I have YaBB running:

http://users.wpi.edu/~mattc/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi

And MDForum (based off phpbb):

http://www.mjcfromct.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=MDForum&file=index

[michaeln]

Thanks all. I'll try a few and hopefully will be able to make it work.

[resstealth]

i downloaded phpbb and it looks flippin impossible... :(

[Direct1]

phpbb does take a little knowledge to setup and your web hosting site must offer MySQL database for it to work but you can do a lot with it once setup. You might want to try the ProBoards site that Fancyf posted; seems a lot easier.

Good luck! :D

[michaeln]

Well as I am running my own web server, I am in the process of configuring Yabb at the moment and am having no great luck yet. Here's as far as I have got to date http://www.waterfordbadminton.org/cgi-bin/yabb/yabb.cgi and all it shows is a blank screen. I will persevere though.

[Direct1]

Does your server meet the requirements?

System requirements to install YaBB
A web hosting account
Perl 5 (or higher) installed on the server your web account is on
CGI.pm v2.4+ and Socket.pm modules installed on the server your web account is on
At least 1 MB of diskspace on your webspace account; over 3 MB recommended
Sendmail (for Linux/Unix) or SMTP (for Windows/NT or Linux/Unix); optional, but recommended

[michaeln]

Thanks Direct1. I an new to this and muddling my way through. I have registered www.waterfordbadminton.org. I have set up a server here at home and am hosting the site from home. I guess that is what you mean by a web hosting account. I am using 602LanSuite to host the site and also as my email server. I have installed Perl and CGI.pm on the server but am unsure how to activate them. Having installed Yabb I wnet through the config file and changed what was needed but no luck to date. As I said, I will persevere :-)

[Swordfish]

there is one more : http://www.simplemachines.org/

[michaeln]

Well I finally managed to install PHPBB and get it up and running. Thanks all.
http://www.waterfordbadminton.org/phpbb2/index.php

I used MS Access 2000 as the database engine.