Which Is The Best BBS ?

XIII

Mar 5 2006, 05:56 AM

I need to know which is the best and most suitable BBS to my site which has little hosting space?
i need it not to take a lot of space, can be customised easily by adding my site logo instead of original logo, can be controlled easily so members could be edited, banned, removed easily "a lot of spammers are around nowdays

", also i want it to be arabic supported if possible but it's not a condition, it's just an option ofcourse it should be easily installable from Cpanel or Fantastico features.
Thanks for helping.

WeaponX

Mar 6 2006, 01:00 AM

You will get different responses from this...

Do you want to have a paid BBS or a free one? I will mention all the popular alternatives.

SimpleMachines - I personally use this one since it's free and does what I want easily. It's included in Fantastico already, so you can install it directly there if you wish to give it a test run. Arabic language is supported. Logo should be easy to edit as well. Also, tech support there is free and usually someone will have an answer to the problem

vBulletin - This is a paid package and is probably one of the most customizable BBS out there. It has lots of hacks/mods that you can install. Lots of settings to change. I would say that this is not for a novice user who just began using BBS. Price is not that cheap either, but if it does what you want, it's worth it. I adminstrated a vB forum before, so I'm not sure how difficult it is to change the logo, etc. But I doubt it's that complicated

InvisionBoard - This is one of my personal favorites. If it wasn't for the price tag and some of the features it was missing that I liked (in SimpleMachines), I would have probably converted. This is also a commercial BBS. You might find it more friendly to use that vBulletin. If you want to give it a trial run, they do have a free version for users to use here. There are some limitations, but you should be able to get the feel of it.

XIII

Mar 6 2006, 01:47 AM

QUOTE(WeaponX @ Mar 6 2006, 10:00 AM)

I would like to get different responses so i could make a good point of view before moving into installing any of them, i tried phpbb2 and it is really bad, i think its support for arabic language is really so bad, also it hasn't a good control panel while you use it in arabic, don't know if it's like that in other languages or not but never tried it in english, i always used to use xoop but in english forums not in arabic forums.
i think i will give SM a try, i never tried it before so i think it deserve a try, i hope everything will be ok, if it's like what you said then the matter will be the space, i will check to see how much space does it need.
thanks for helping.

pyost

Mar 6 2006, 08:27 AM

All the bulleting board system need little space, but that shouldn't be the main factor. As WeaponX said, SMF is the best for your needs. If you don't want to pay for a BBS, you are left with SMF and phpBB.

phpBB is full of holes and even I can crack it. You can find bunch of tutorials on doing this, and a lot of people do it just out of fun. So, stay away from phpbb if you don't want to be annoyed.

On the other hand, SMF is great. Personally, I don't like it, I prefer IPB, which I use, but it is great. It is rather customizable and I believe there is a fair number of modifications. What's even better, there's almost no way to crack it. At least it can't be found online easily. So if you SMF get's cracked, know that it has been done by a professional who can probably crack all BBSs

XIII

Mar 10 2006, 08:21 AM

QUOTE(pyost @ Mar 6 2006, 05:27 PM)

It didn't work with me, for more than 3 times it crashs and i lose my saved data, like profile data, how much does IPB cost?, isn't there any other free solution but SMF?, what about content managers?, is there anyother solution between them?, i used xoop before, it's good, but it doesn't support arabic fonts though SMF and phpBB do, really so confused with that

twitch

Mar 12 2006, 11:12 AM

vBulletin and IPB are not what you are looking for. They have thousands of features and the result is a heavy database and space load.

I would personally recommend PHPBB or SMF. You could also try the several other smaller ones out there.

pyost

Mar 12 2006, 02:17 PM

Yes, you could use another free forum software that is also used by www.proboards.com. It is not as good as the ones before, but is free and quite secure.

And phpBB should be avoided as much as it can.

infamousflame

Mar 12 2006, 03:44 PM

Do a google for free forum software etc. and you'll get some different results. I'd agree that phpBB and SMF are the most popular free ones. You could host a SMF remotely but I don't know if you could install the languages if you did that. If you want to host it remotely try www.smfhost.com or google. Hope this helps you out

XIII

Mar 13 2006, 01:55 AM

i'll try to get a free, light and secured one, but i want to know if astahost will allow me to set up it on my account?

Hercco

Mar 13 2006, 10:02 AM

To my knowledge, Astahost allows any kinds of discussion board systems on hosted site.

Personally, I would recommend SMF. I have lot of experience with phpBB and I got fed up to it because of the security issues (need for constant upgrading) and the lack of basic features that I think a BBS should have (for example, sub categories). PhpBB has mods for nearly all possible features but they make upgrading a living hell.

VBulleting and IPB are nice systems but they cost money while at least for me SMF more than enough. Why pay for features that you don't need.

Latest Entries

Sten

Jan 9 2008, 12:14 AM

if you want a free one or just start off free, id say MyBB. its really good.

if you want to pay for one then vBulletin. its the best there is in my opinion.

other ones like smf and phpbb are ok but for me, mybb stands out from the crowd.

docduke

Jan 8 2008, 11:56 PM

I recommend phpBB, but that somewhat depends on (1) how easy it is to have an AstaHost script install it, or (2) how proficient you are with debugging. I have a small home network. I have been running phpBB for about 4 years, and MediaWiki for two. I first installed it on a Windows-95 class machine (400 MHz, 128 MB ram, SuSE Linux) 4 years ago, and spent several days figuring out which of the several userids it asked for belonged to it, to MySQL, and to me. Recently, I moved the data in the board to a much newer computer (Acer Aspire laptop, purchased July 2007), and a much newer version of phpBB. The scripts to update the data (changing the record structure in MySQL, etc.) were all in the package, though it took a while rooting through bulletin board posts to find out where to look for them. Very much to the developer's credit, the scripts looked at the original files, determined the origional (4 year old) version number, and applied just the fixes needed to bring the data up to the current version.

There are certainly easier bulletin-board systems out there, but phpBB is very capable, as far as I am concerned. As a bonus, the developers just finished 3 years of work, and came out with a totally rewritten version (which I have not, however, tested myself.

xboxrulz

Dec 3 2007, 12:52 AM

InvisionFree is not a trial site, but it's a website that provides free installation of the last free version of Invision Power Board (which was version 1.3). Thereby, your forum right now hosted off site and is not currently installed on your system. If you are like me and love to go all out with your forum software and want full customizability, I highly recommend you to download a forum software and just install it to your Astahost host webspace.

xboxrulz

skedad

Dec 2 2007, 08:32 PM

QUOTE(xboxrulz @ Dec 2 2007, 02:18 PM)

I guess you actually went out and bought a license? I loved it when Invision was free. When they decided to go paid, a lot of people split and went back to phpBB or went on to SMF or QSF or other big boards. I think some of them even went on to make MyBB since that board system is very similar to IPB.

xboxrulz

Hmmmm.... so now I wonder if this is the part where I kick myself... It might only be a free trial. Now that I have seen your reply, I am wondering. My address was showing invisionfree.com, so is it like a watered down version!? Or now I wonder if now my addy is free because maybe that is possibly what trial sites are like... If it is free, that would be pretty sweet, it would have ads on it, but I am just WAY too new at forums to get really concerned about it... kind of like when I first started out doing webpages.... it could change once I get the hang of it!

I guess time will tell... and if it does end up staying free, I'll post it!

- skedad -

xboxrulz

Dec 2 2007, 07:18 PM

QUOTE(skedad @ Dec 2 2007, 11:09 AM)

Well now... I have followed along with BBS and creating forums. I just wanted to see what it was all about, and I must have found the same host that astahost uses. It is a pretty cool thing to bump into, because it is almost just like working through the Astahost forums. I didn't really do anything as of yet, but dang, I really like it! I think there will be a lot of work involved being an admin in my own forum and then come here to post, but as the idea is similar, there is a lot of priority and involvement level.

I would be involved with Astahost maybe on a more professional level compared to my own... but I would still be myself as to participation and how I will post to each. I don't expect I would have a lot of movement to my new forum site, but I would still like to have my crew be able to connect together... and not so much try to get them involved in web hosting!

Ok, so I guess I am writing this post backwards... but I guess I can say I am now trying Invision... it was brought up so I thought I would give it a try myself... and since it is SOO close to what Astashost has layout wise, I will have to do A LOT of customizing! But isn't that what it's all about!!??

- skedad -

ADD REPLY / Got an Opinion!	a humble request :-)	RAPID SEARCH!	Free Hosting	[X]
Express your Opinions, Thoughts or Contribute your information that might help someone here. Ask your Doubts & Queries to get answers.. "Together, We enlight each other!"	Register FREE for AD-FREE forum, Create your own topics, Ask Questions, track topics, setup subscriptions & notifications and Get a Free Website w/ Email and FTP.		500MB Space No Ads, CPanel, FTP, PHP, MySQL, EMails - 100% FREE