Can anyone recommend a bulletin board?

Free - open source - php/perl....

[gethan]

Hi,

I'm planning to put a bulletin board on a sponsored but non-profit community (regional) site that I'm building. Has anyone got any recommendations?

Key things are:

Free -- open source preferable - I'd like to be able to modify and pass the updates back.
Php/Perl -- my languages of choice
Db -- mysql or file based not bothered.
Easy to customize and admin.
Not requiring non-standard binary packages/libs. (On a hosting package - linux)

I've looked on FreshMeat and the Web (google) - both brought up lots of options - but I would really appreciate a recommendation - webmaster to webmaster ;)

Cheers guys

Gethan

[Marshall]

Gethan,

Try UBB - Ultimate Bulletin Board at www.infopop.com. They offer both a free and paid version. I've seen it used on several sites and found it easy to use post and retrieve information.

[mark_roach]

Have a look at [webmasterworld.com...]

There are a few suggestions in there.

[Vishal]

Also check out

Blaze Board
YABB [My Favorite]
PHP BB

[jennifer]

We've used Discus on several sites. It is easy to install and customize.

[ggrot]

Maybe Brett would sell the source to these boards. I think he's done a pretty good job from the user interface side.

[BelleLeDoux]

You can try this:
[forum.snitz.com...]

[john316]

Ditto on Discus, if you do a "no frames" installation it is very spider friendly.

[mark_roach]

>>if you do a "no frames" installation it is very spider friendly.

Spider friendliness is certainly one of the criteria I would use when selecting forum software. One of those most spider friendly boards was (and still is) wwwboard from Matt's Script Archive.

[gethan]

Thanks guys - really great response :)

I've loooked at all the boards suggested. I rejected some due to asp, and others due to cost. (I'm not getting paid for this one :( )

Discus - I don't think my hosting package would work with this due to the dynamically created html (ending .html?345435xxx etc).

I've reduced my shortlist to 2 boards now. XMB and PHPBB -- I'll try both out and let you know how they go.

Its a shame that I couldn't really go with the spider friendly boards ... I think the traffic generation potential of them would be great. Oh well.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Gethan

[gethan]

2 weeks on I have made my board :) (Well officially about a week ago it was first live)

I used XMB and was surprised at how easy it was to install and build the board. I've customised it a little, but plan to do much much more (using custom 404 pages to make the board spiderable). See my profile for the site url. (Don't laugh at my current lack of visitors too much)

Thanks for all the help.

[Brett_Tabke]

The ones I've looked at:

Discuss: awesome from the webmaster side. Now find me a successfull Discuss board (eg: users are confused by it and don't use it).
Pop Forums: they've come a long way. With a little tweaking, I think it could work good.
UBB: Too system intensive. Some hosts have banned it. 95% over priced.
UltraBoard: The first version was great. The recent one is over blown and over priced. Users don't like it and hosts won't like you for running it.
Iconboard (modified BoardPower): looks suspiciously like this one eh? If I had to start from scratch, this would probably be the one I'd use.
VBulletin. Good stuff and some features I would like to emulate here. BUT, look at the format and style. Vbb will _not_ last (mark my words). Most vbb's are getting that old 'trashed out' look to them. The quality of messages on VBB boards has continually gone down hill.
Mine is modified BoardPower from 2 years ago. It's all custom specific stuff and would take two months work to 'generize' it.

related:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[gethan]

Cheers Brett

Iconboard really took some tracking down... eventually I found it ikonboard ;)

I was really impressed with it (running on their site) but discovered this little piece in the licence that may rule it out for me.

You may not modify, adapt, translate, rent, lease, loan, resell for profit or added value the Software or related documentation.

The first 3 points are the ones I'm concerned with.

You may add modifications to the code as long as:
You do not modify this licence in any way .... etc

So I'm a little confused :(

both quotes from [ikonboard.com...]

There seems to be a lot of boards being developed that have completely ignored spidering. It would be nice to have a BB that could be installed in two modes (novice and expert).

[maccas]

You can hack it as much as you want as long as you dont pass it of as your own, remove the copyright, distribute it in its hacked form, sell it... Have a read of their forums, they have discussions on ways to modify it.

[sun818]

UBB (Ultra Bulletin Board) has an older Unix version they will sell you at the current price that will write each thread out as a static page. By the way, where is the free version? Is this the trial?

DCForums (by dcscripts.com) also allows saves each thread as a static page.

[netcommr]

I would also have to give my vote to Ikonboard. I'm in the process right now of hackin it to death for commercial use. It almost has too much to it for the adverage site.