'Open Source' (free) Bulletin Board suggestions?

bungebunge
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
The title pretty much says it all. I need to find an open source bulletin board solution for work. Anyone recommend any? I found this page with some suggestions, but I'd like to hear from some personal experiences.



Basically I'm going to need to set some up and let an 'administrator' administer the site. It needs to be free, simple to maintain and most of all free. If it installs on Linux, that's A++. If it needs ISS, that's evil.



phpbb caught my eye. Does anyone know much about it? Anything similar?



Could you all forget your ill will at me for one thread and help? Please? Pretty please?



If no one can recommend a good in house solution, is there a decent free/cheap third party provider that doesn't spam the crap out of all the users?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 13
    brbr Posts: 8,395member
    Ikonboard is good. I know some people who have had great success with it.
  • Reply 2 of 13
    progmacprogmac Posts: 1,850member
    we ran a bulletin board in college using PHPBB...we had about a hundred users and twenty or so posts a day. we found it was able to do everything we wanted it to do, and we could not have wanted anything more. to boot, it was easy to set up



    go with it
  • Reply 3 of 13
    giaguaragiaguara Posts: 2,724member
    Woltlab. It is free, just stick in the version 1.2.

    Easy, powerful enough admin tools, doesn't get easily screwed etc.

    I've had one running for nearly 2 years, and it's been changed to 3 different servers and is still fine, the old posts are still fine and working.



    Some examples of boards using woltlab 1.2



    http://www.bodynet.org/forum/

    http://anorexia.wbbhost4u.com/forum

    http://wbbhost4u.com/wbb2/ (that uses woltl.2)

    http://bsolinks.com/board

    http://www.wbbmods.com

    http://www.woltlab.de/en/forum/



    Basically fine for anything unless the site is something like the size of bigsoccer (in which case I would just stuck to vbulletin). It is functional, and I have seen a lot of different styles, skins, languages for it. phpBB looks always the same (the blueish standard skin - and the only exceptions to that I've seen are the wannabe aqua styles) and lacks some simple tools without which I don't feel comfortable with.



    I've been happy with woltlab. Works fine. Looks what I want it to look like, and if I need any help e.g. with board hacks or any tools, there are boards out there for just asking for help with them.
  • Reply 4 of 13
    burningwheelburningwheel Posts: 1,827member
    i use yabb



    i think this has been discussed in another forum a while ago



    mods do your work
  • Reply 5 of 13
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    phpBB is solid. Really solid. I've used it a couple of times, and I very much recommend it. I wrote a message board program a while back for a client who wanted an ASP solution that could take a lot of hits. It required very little bandwidth and processor time in comparison to others out there. But phpBB did pretty well in comparison (better than VBulletin), and it's somewhat prettier than my proprietary solution.
  • Reply 6 of 13
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. phpbb looks to be a front runner, along with woltlab. I can follow up if anyone is interested in the results.
  • Reply 7 of 13
    silentechoessilentechoes Posts: 288member
    phpBB gets my vote. Easy to setup. Takes a beating, plenty of admin tools..
  • Reply 8 of 13
    akumulatorakumulator Posts: 1,111member
    I'm using PHPBB for my site and really like it.
  • Reply 9 of 13
    resres Posts: 711member
    I've used phpbb for several sites and I really like it.
  • Reply 10 of 13
    giaguaragiaguara Posts: 2,724member
    Show me ONE board running phpBB that looks decent.

    Without the standard or any kind of aqua or fake aqua feel.

    Just ONE.
  • Reply 11 of 13
    madmax559madmax559 Posts: 596member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Giaguara

    Show me ONE board running phpBB that looks decent.

    Without the standard or any kind of aqua or fake aqua feel.

    Just ONE.





    http://forums.gentoo.org
  • Reply 12 of 13
    burningwheelburningwheel Posts: 1,827member
    what's a good free forum to sue with a windows server? i've tried yabb but it has some problems
  • Reply 13 of 13
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Giaguara

    Show me ONE board running phpBB that looks decent.

    Without the standard or any kind of aqua or fake aqua feel.

    Just ONE.



    http://ppc.clubnozza.com/banter/



    My only gripe about phpbb is that it's not very well thought out on the low level. That is, there are some sturctural differences they could have chosen that would have made phpbb simpler, faster, and use a lot less db and memory access. Of course, vBulletin seems to make the same mistakes.
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