What is the best free board?

[bjford]

I've gone through many boards finding the best. Let me give a review. These are not in order of best to worse, it's just my opinions on each one.

Ikonboard- Ikonboard is customizable and easy to use ONCE YOU INSTALL IT. Installation for this board was hard for me. Also, it can take up alot of space (as other boards, but this can take ALOT)

Invisionboard- Good board, but a little harder to customize. It was again pretty hard to install it, and somewhat easy to use.

XMB- Easy installation, Easy use, but has glitches and not too many features

PHPbb- Somewhat-easy installation, easy to use, but again is hard to customize.

Snitz- I didn't even bother to install it. The design is okay, but it doesn't have alot of features, and it not easily installed

YaBB- I used this, and it has alot of glitches. I didn't install it, so I wouldn't know if it is hard to install. I hated that piece of Crap.

YaBBse- Don't know much about it. Would be interesting to try it.

If anyone wants to add, etc, go ahead. BTW- I use XMB. It's an O.K. board, and was perfect for me. The only problem is that you can't have customized rank images, so... kinda hard...

[Bruce]

Originally posted by bjford

PHPbb- Somewhat-easy installation, easy to use, but again is hard to customize. I don't find that to be the case. If you know HTML, you can edit the files directly, but even if you don't know HTML, you can still easily change the appearance using their built-in template editor.

[HistoryGirl]

i've used Ikonboard quite liked it i guess but i like IBF a lot more much better more features :)

[GregT]

what about wBB ? easy to setup, easy to use, and if you know html you can make it look way better than a vB :)

[Bruce]

wBB is also not free.

[notnamed]

I think that InvisonBoard and PHPbb have the easiest installation procedures, and IBF's "Board Wrapper" setting in the AdminCP makes it easy for me to add the banner codes my host requires as well as the links for my hosting service :) I don't like Ikonboard much, but it's Perl and I don't like Perl much so...;)

[GregT]

Originally posted by Bruce
wBB is also not free.

since when ? i never said 2, i meant 1.1.1 which is free :rolleyes:

[The Red Guy]

Have you really examined the boards? Cos I find InvisionBoard easiest to install, contary to what your review say. If you didn't bother to install, don't comment about "crap". :rolleyes:

[Chroder]

I would go with invision board. As Red Guy said, I found the installation a snap - most boardsa are easy instalation for m.\e. Not to mention with the new release it has loads of features.

[leetcrew]

phpBB is the best free bbs. The quality is good as paid forums... if you have $$$, i suggest you to buy vBulletin

[ExoWorks]

I think you must try Invision Board. Its cool :D

[Archbob]

Its hard to compare invision and phpBB. Out of the box, invision is better because it has more features. However, phpBB is over source, so some of the hacks and mods are very cool.

But if you don't want to hack anything I suggest invision. It does take more bandwidth though. If you don't know what invision looks like, look at the forum in my sig.

[GregT]

i gues im the only wBB fan left here :(

[Archbob]

Yeah, I think both phpbb2 and invision are both better.

[GregT]

i think they are to hard to customize compared to wBB

[Ashed]

I'm also a WBB fan - http://forum.grinster.net/. :D
I tried to edit the templates of Invision and phpBB and I found it really hard. WBB is more straight forward but I ended up editing 300+ HTML files. :eek: :biggrin2:

[The Red Guy]

For templates, I find that Invision Board has a system from hell. ;) WBB's one is simple but tedious as they're so many files to edit, phpBB2's is the straightforward one.

[conkermaniac]

Originally posted by GRiN
I'm also a WBB fan - http://forum.grinster.net/. :D
I tried to edit the templates of Invision and phpBB and I found it really hard. WBB is more straight forward but I ended up editing 300+ HTML files. :eek: :biggrin2:

Wow, nice forum! :)

I actually get very annoyed editing the phpBB templates. There are just so many bugs...so many problems. At least when I tried it was so. :confused2

[Ashed]

That's what I kind of thought, too.
It looked really confusing and it was pretty confusing compared to WBB's simple HTML files and simple variables.

[GregT]

Only took me 4 days to get my templates pretty much perfect and my style is in rc1 now. just have to clean up a few things :D
http://yupadog.com/forums/

[Ashed]

It took you 4 days, it took me months. :)

[GregT]

You want yours to look like vB tho and you translated from the german version your self.

[bjford]

I don't want to bump this thread, but I forgot I posted this topic!

I did find out about WBB. It is a VERY good forum, and easy to use. Plus, it looks like vBulletin. I would say it is the best of them all. But for some reason I deleted it. I didn't like the colors, but didn't realize that I could change that. I'm downloading it again. Does anybody know of some good skins?

[GregT]

Did you get the new wBB 1.2 ? it has a very nice default style.

[biggulp]

Originally posted by raz0r
Did you get the new wBB 1.2 ? it has a very nice default style. do u mean wbb2? i've only heard of 1.1

[The Red Guy]

No, WBB 1.2 . They released it to fix bugs, ending up with more bugs now. :)

[bjford]

Just downloaded it... but I'm having problems... I can't create a forum! When I fill out all the info at the CPanel, and click submit or whatever, a blank page appears, and nothing happens... grr...

[leetcrew]

i think wBB is quite expensive than vB... VB is only $160 and wBB is $200+ (removal of copyright)

[hostjet]

my vote for best free message board goes to phpbb version 2
when it launched there were not too many good templates to choose from, but I have seen some really good templates on offer lately.

[leetcrew]

i'll go with phpBB2 too :)

anyway, customization is easy if you know HTML