A good free forum/board?

Red Kooga

Anyone know of a good free forum I can add to a site without any popups?

smeggle

you could check out www.hotscripts.com

Red Kooga

I got over 200 searchs back when I put in "forum" and none of them seemed to be Font related. Have you any direct URL's? Thanks ;o)

Goodshape

Requires PHP and MySQL :
http://www.phpbb.com/

Red Kooga

Thanks

miju

phpBB is nice and easy to get up and running and skin,

kooga im not trying to start a big fuss here but shouldnt the guy you chose for your site on the other thread be asking these questions / already know the answers?

seo-ireland

phpbb, I concur

mneylon

If it's for a business site avoid phpbb. It's a security nightmare.

richardo

blacknight wrote:

If it's for a business site avoid phpbb. It's a security nightmare.

I ran phpBB on a couple of sites and agree with Blacknight. It was a nightmare.

In the end, I switched to SMF and have had no problems since. It can be found at Simple Machines

squibs

Curious - what security problems does phpbb have (assuming it's kept up to date)? I've been running it for a few years now, with >10K articles, and no issues.

mneylon

squibs - when there are 3 or 4 serious security holes and upgrades in the space of a couple of weeks I tend to lose confidence:

http://www.mneylon.com/blog/archives/2005/07/11/the-death-of-phpbb/

steve-hosting36

As per squibs, phpBB is excellent when well maintained and patched when security releases come out (like any software)

matrim

This is a good site for checking security problems.
http://secunia.com/

squibs

I think the security holes are caused because phpbb is prolific and more profitable to hack, same as there are more windows than mac OS viruses.

Serbian

squibs wrote:

Curious - what security problems does phpbb have (assuming it's kept up to date)? I've been running it for a few years now, with >10K articles, and no issues.

A quick search on Google shows a few articles detailing some of the security issues. If you keep it up to date you are definitely minimising the riks, but simply because of its track records I would steer clear of it if at all possible.

mneylon

The problem is that phpbb has a history of serious holes. The "cos it's popular" argument is irrelevant. Apache is popular - when was the last serious security hole?

squibs

Apache is only secure as the config it's running. Similarly, most hacked phpbb installs are downrev. I once let an board go 3 minor revisions behind and it was quickly hacked - I learned my lesson. I've never had a security issue on an up to date install.

A php application is always going to be more easily hacked than a .exe as you have direct access to the source code. I still haven't seen anything to suggest that phpbb is inherently any less secure than the other non-commercial stuff.

Popularity is most certainly relevant. The script kiddies won't waste time on an exploit that won't get them noticed.

Fergal C

http://www.simplemachinesforum.org/ they are currently moving servers, but I've seen good reports on their forum software.

Serbian

I have also heard that Lussumo's Vanilla Forum is very good too. Looks nice and simple anyway.

nellyshark

I Second SMF.