Forum Webhosting

What is PhpBB?

PhpBB is one of the oldest, and without any possible doubts, the most used forum software around the world. This is so true that many users think that PhpBB is the official definition of a forum community on Internet. We have reviewed the 3rd version of this forum software, released on December 13th, 2007. The official announcement was proud to declare that it took 5 years to improve PhpBB 2 to the official PhpBB 3, with more than 200.000 modified lines of code.

Visit site: www.phpbb.com

What is vBulletin 4?

vBulletin is one of the most famous solution for providing a forum software to communities. The latest major 4.0 version has been released in the end of the year 2009, and was a great opportunity to revamp and organize the vBulletin softwares suite. As you may know, vBulletin company does not only edit a forum software of the same name, but also a CMS and a Blog software. Those two tools could be absolutely used with the vBulletin Forum in order to administrate a whole website with the same software solution.

Visit site: www.vbulletin.com

What is MyBB?

While ago considered as an outsider, comparing to the big boards of Internet, MyBB is more and more popular, mostly for three of its qualities: simplicity, extensive administration panel and powerful plugin system. MyBB is a based on the PHP/MySQL technology, and is a free open source forum software, and has included AJAX and Web 2.0 features just-as-needed. Nothing too much heavy, but really practical for an everyday usage.

Visit site: www.mybb.com

What is Extreme Message Board?

Extreme Message Board, also known as XMB provides a powerful forum software, quite complete, with themes, modifications, and support of a good community. Since the last time we reviewed XMB, this software got more and more features, and finally reaches a step where every major requirements for a forum software are present and really easy to use.

Visit site: www.xmbforum.com

What is ZetaBoards?

ZetaBoards is a free forum hosting service. It is edited by Zathyus Networks, creator of the famous InvisionFree.com service.

Both platforms are free forum hosting oriented, but where InvisionFree is based on the last free version of Invision Power Board, Zetaboards has made its success on an internally developed forum software, of course proprietary, that seems to be based on Invision Power Board as well.

Visit site: www.zetaboards.com

What is Simple Machines?

Simple Machines Forum, most of the time called SMF is a free software package that supports online communities. It is designed to provide an extensive list of features, and try to be as nice as possible with server resources. It runs on the classical couple PHP/MySQL, and is supported by most web servers

Visit site: www.simplemachines.org

What is YaBB?

YaBB is one of the oldest existing forum software on Internet. It started in 2000, when PERL was the most powerful tool for designing website. YaBB has clearly defined its path since the past 10 years, and still could be considered as a good alternative if you have skills in installing and configuring the mod_perl Apache module.

Visit site: www.yabbforum.com

What is Lefora?

Lefora Team was fed up to see that major message boards, like vBulletin and PhpBB (to not quote them) were lacking important features, even if they are used everyday, for so much reasons. To avoid creating another new classic forum software, they decided it was time to improve the global way of managing communities, and the created Lefora, one of the first free forum hosting service, if you do not count the old BulletinBoards.

Visit site: www.lefora.com

What is Comm100 Forum?

Comm100 is a company dedicated to provide internal or public communication tools to companies.

They provide for such purpose several softwares, mainly linked to Web:

• Forum
• Live Chat
• Newsletter
• Email Ticket
• Issue Tracking
• Knowledge Base
• Survey
• And of course, consolidated reports around all these tools.

Of course, we are going to talk about the Forum software, that is what is interesting us. According to their website, 42.925 companies chose one of their solutions this year. Let’s see if it can easily suit your company requirements as well.

Visit site: www.comm100forum.com

What is MiniBB?

MiniBB (aka Mini Bulletin Board) is a free PHP forum software on which you can build your online community. MiniBB main guideline is called the three S’s directive: Security, Speed and Stability.

Visit site: www.minibb.com

What is Woltlab Burning Board?

Woltlab Burning Board is a PHP based forum software, developed since 2001 by an German company, WoltLab GmbH. Burning Boards exists in two versions:Since the beginning, Burning Board counts more than 100,000 active installations over Internet.

Differences between Burning Board and Burning Board Lite

Burning Board Lite is free and is simply a light version of what propose the full and commercial Burning Board product. You will be able to migrate from the light and free edition quite easily, so this is perfect to review and test the software before purchase it. We would really appreciate this kind of efforts from other commercial companies, so thank you Woltlab for showing the right example.

Visit site: www.woltlab.com