Hi,
Is there any free programs on the web to assist me in creating a forum for my own personal website. If anyone could help me, that would be a great help. Any tips, programs or just afew pointers in the right direction would be excellent.

Thankyou so much for your help, most appreciated.

Do you have to create one from scratch? How about using ones that are already out there and ready for use? There are many forums out there that you can use for free. The one I recommend using is SimpleMachines. I have been using them for a while now and they are great. Always improving the code and it has many mods for you to choose from.

If you want a paid forum, I suggest getting InvisionPowerBoard. I love the interface and the admin settings are easy to learn and use.

there are a lot of readymade cgi forum around... here some of it.. hope will help ya

http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_...essage_Systems/

if u been hosted by astahost, just use its php forum.. alot of people use it nowadays, and wuts more, u dont have to install it. just click and click... nice feature

phpBB forums are good (and free). They can be installed using Fantastico in cPanel or be uploaded via FTP from your PC.

My forum was made using phpBB:
My Forumhttp://www.thejeffsta.astahost.com/Forum/

To download the latest version, visit
phpBB Bulletin Board Downloads

My forum is currently using the iCGStation skin/theme which is a 3rd party skin/theme created by Ray of iOpional (korean site - theme is english). You should be able to find a download of this if you like it, or you could search for a different/better one.

Well, it's definitely easier and more convenient to just install phpBB from your cPanel or go register for a free one at the free forum sites. But the advantage of coding your own forum is that you get 100% control over it's function, navigation feature and other features. But you'll probably take very long to do a decent one.

I'll go with Weapon X in recommend simplemachines. It's no hard to install a forum (even if you don't have fantastico in your control panel). All you need is a hosting that support php (or asp) a ftp and some knowdledge on how to create a database and chmod some files.

Of course you'll want to change the theme to make your forum match your site.
A few twist in the css file and a couple of images to replace the default ones can do the trick.

If you need help with design I'd be glad to help.

Invision Power Board (IPB) is definetly the best if you want a top quality bussiness looking board. But if your looking for a more fun type board then I'd go for vBulletin (vB). Simple Machines (SMF) is alright to I suppose but do not get phpBB, it is so crap seriously. You can't get subforums and the layout of the forums and the logo is just so dodgy. But the choice is yours.

I agree, I like invision power boards the best. But there are lots of other good options as well. You can either register an acount an get an already hosted forum, or you can download an open source forum and upload them on your website. If you want to get an already hosted forum, I would go with invision power board. Another good one of RunBoard. If you want to upload, I would go with phpBB. Here are a list of forum sites:

http://www.phpbb.com/
http://invisionfree.com/
http://www.runboard.com/

Ugh, phpBB....very insecure, not to mention it's been in feature lock for a while now.

I recommend MyTopix. It's fast, easy to use...and free.