Ok well i'm gonna start this topic with a big . Anyways I need help because I don't know all of the forum types out there(php etc.). I need to know the type of forums out there and which forum would be the best forum for a halo 1, 2, and 3 discussion, and online tournaments(xbox live and xboxconnect) disscussion. So if somebody could enlighten me on the best kind for that(that is easy to use/make), Has CSS and the regular things like that. Thx in Advance .

~ZoroSeerus a.k.a. Team Destiny 07

It's a matter of which one YOU like more. If you search around, you will see many different forums for Halo and other gaming sites. If you want to use a commercial (paid) forum, the two most popular ones are vBulletin and InvisionBoard (which is what Astahost uses here). I think vBulletin has more mods and hacks to it so you can customize it to your liking. But it can be very daunting unless you know your way around in vBulletin. InvisionBoard should be a bit easier to use and administer.

You can play around with vBulletin a little by using their demo version:

http://www.vbulletin.com/admindemo.php

For InvisionBoard, they have a free version (limited features) at:

http://www.invisionfree.com

You should get a feel of what both will be like after testing them a little more.

If you want to go with the free alternative, I highly recommend using SimpleMachines Forum:

http://www.simplemachines.org

I have been using it for years now and absolutely love it. Support is available if you encounter problems with it.

Most web hosts who use cPanel should have SimpleMachines Forum listed in Fantastico. So it's pretty much straight forward to install as well

All these forums should be up-to-date and I'm sure they support CSS editing for their styles and other features.

and if you want to use somekind of an laternative to those boards, you can use phorum.. you'll might have some more knowledge to use it, but they give a lot of support.. Phorum has lots of extra stuff and is very fast and almost as powerfull as other boards.. You can read about it here: http://www.phorum.org

I've personally used phpBB on my site, and I found it widely customizable! Just browse through the (unending) list of phpBB MODs and you'll see there's one for almost everything! I've been using the CashMOD which allows users to earn cash for the posts they make (Somewhat similar to the way we earn credits in here, just a bit less complicated!) - which they can later use to buy item from the ShopMOD! Similarly, you can setup MODs on your phpBB forum to make it more interactive to your users.

Every board has a theme, and yours is gaming, so you can seek Gaming MODs in the phpBB community and load it up to your forum! Besides, its damn easy to setup phpBB on your site! You can download phpBB free of cost at http://www.phpbb.com . You can browse through the MODs and themes to suit your style and requirements at http://www.phpbb.com/community

There's a tutorial on how to install phpBB on your site here on Astahost,which can be found here.