By the way sayonara, will i go to hell for all this blatent advertising for my science forum on a science forum?

I shouldn't think so - they aren't quite looking for the same kind of members.

Okay, now I'm seriously looking for one.

 

Thing is, on the phpBB support forum, it seems like everyone is being hacked... how safe is it?

Are there any good alternatives that are safe?

 

This would be a forum with perhaps several thousand members. I don't need a lot of advanced features. What would be best?

As long as you keep phpBB up-to-date, it's safer than most.

 

HOWEVER it gets exponentially more difficult to manage as you get more members.

What are the problems with more members?

I don't want to have to invest in vB.

The user group management is not very well thought out, and there is no support for default groups (yet- this is planned for the next version).

 

The permissions sytem is a right mess.

 

You can't pick members from a list, so unless you can alter properties by group you have to type their names in one by one and make changes.

 

Et cetera.

But if I were only to make one group, plus mods/admins, would it be that painful?

 

If it would, I'd like to know what other forums there are, or if I can mod it (I'm hoping to learn PHP sometime...) to fix that.

What, in your opinion, is the best free forum software that can be placed on your own domain name (instead of yourforum.freeforums.com, it can be at yourforum.com)?

 

I have had experience with most forum software. I have to say vBulletin is the best commercial forum software and PHPBB Plus is the best free forum software.

 

One thing I don't like about PHPBB is how you have to set premissions for each forum and stuff like that after you have created the forum. I have to say that Invision has beat PHPBB on that one.

But if I were only to make one group, plus mods/admins, would it be that painful?

Can I have an answer? Methinks I'm going to be doing this soon, if it's approved.

Answer "not really, or at least not until you have lots of members".

 

As Jordie said, the per-forum permissions can be a real bitch, especially when you're trying to work out which permissions (user, group or forum) take precedence.

Okay... with my plans and needs it looks like I'll be fine, only with some extra work to do. I'm glad I have piles of spare time.

When 2.2 comes out it should make your life a bit easier. Although at the current development rate, that'll take about another 97,000 years.

PHPBB2 for sure. Easy as hell to setup, if you have trouble, just befriend someone who has already done it to help you.

 

I haven't done anything with Invision yet, I hear its okay. Xoops is alright.

When 2.2 comes out it should make your life a bit easier. Although at the current development rate, that'll take about another 97,000 years.

Actually they're skipping 2.2 and going straight to 3.0 now, because of the compatibility. Just wait until the end of February, they say.

Well, I took everybody's advice and went with phpBB. I'll say, it's quite nice really. I like how much of a variety of skins and mods there are, although the administration panel is kind of lacking in options. Fortunately, I think that by the time my forum gets big, phpBB 3.0 will be out (I hope).

when I first started I was using phpBB2, and now I upgraded to phpBB3 and I must say phpBB3 is very good.

 

What I love about phpBB, is how you can just customize the hell out of it, vBulletin, IPB... you can also do the same, but with phpBB (at least to me) the sky is the limit... plus its free.

Edited January 24, 200916 yr by Sayonara³

Well that wasn't blatant.

Well that wasn't blatant.

 

And a bot that gets around.

 

When the inanimate imitate the living and resurrect threads... I can't help but find it all a little creepy.

Oof.

I've heard good things about Altered Beast but I haven't used it myself.

And a bot that gets around.

 

When the inanimate imitate the living and resurrect threads... I can't help but find it all a little creepy.

Skynet V1.0

 

 

RUN!!!!