What forum is best?

[bandgeekmafia78]

Hi.

 

I'm in the process of developing my own website for a forum-based music exchange (which will be completely free btw). However, I'm struggling with the back-end. I would like a forum that works in a similar way to EduGeek, with users able to give rep power, get PM's, etc. etc.

 

Can anyone suggest?

 

Thanks.

 

Alan.

[glennda]

are you looking for free software or paid for? Edugeek runs on vbulletin but there are other free ones out there

[localzuk]

phpBB can do what you want - so long as you add mods.

 

vBulletin can also do that, and is what edugeek runs on. However, you have to pay for it.

[bandgeekmafia78]

I was just looking at VBulletin - probably not a good idea for me to fork out £123 for a website that will probably fail!

Having a look at phpBB at the moment. Looks a bit tricky to set up though.

 

Thanks.

[glennda]

There is also vanilla which is ok - i installed it but only to play with Vanilla - Free, Open-Source Forum Software

[somabc]

Have you considered http://code.reddit.com/ you can either run the code on your own server or just create a hosted subreddit with yourself as Mod. You can add a CNAME record aliasing your domain to rhs.reddit.com. You will be able to access your reddit through your domain. Edited March 15, 2011 by somabc

[Edu-IT]

I'd say PHPBB3 to start out then if it works well you can very easily move everything over to vBulletin, they have tools for that.

[SneakyBeaky]

I use Simple Machines Forum on two of my websites.

Home of SMF: Free PHP and MySQL forum software

Mods available.

[LosOjos]

What, you mean you're not going to painstakingly build one from scratch? pffft (BTW - I don't recommend it! Not for a live website anyway, great learning curve though...)

 

+1 for phpBB for it's customisability

 

And don't forget to share the link when it's up and running

[SneakyBeaky]

Lots to compare here:

ForumMatrix - Compare Them All

Tick the ones you want to compare:

[Cache]

Take a look at MyBB - free and has a vBulletin-ish look to it.

 

I've recently setup phpBB and wish I'd used MyBB instead now.

 

Other alternative is the recently launched XenForo.

[bandgeekmafia78]

Thanks for your suggestions - gone with phpbb in the end. I'll post the URL once its up and running!