[tmbchr]™

PHP Forum Apps?



Does anybody have any experience running PHP/mySQL bulletin board applications? I’m halfway thinking about putting one up and would love suggestions as to how best to do it. I want one that’s super simple to install, edit and administrate. I don’t want to have to spend half my day fixing problems with it.

I’d love something that was as stylistically simple and elegant as Barbelith’s system. Right now I’m looking at phpBB and Phorum. Of those two, Phorum seems much simpler. I guess all I’m really looking for is a way for people to be able to post and discuss links and ideas independently of my actual blog itself. I’m looking for very minimal moderation on my part. Anybody wants to hash this all out with me, drop me some comments about the best direction to proceed.







6 Reader Responses

  1. Tim Boucher Says:
    October 2nd, 2005 at 3:49 pm

    Special thanks to Andy for recommending PunBB, which is what Noble Realms runs off of. From their about page:

    PunBB is a fast and lightweight PHP-powered discussion board. It is released under the GNU General Public License. Its primary goals are to be faster, smaller and less graphically intensive as compared to other discussion boards. PunBB has fewer features than many other discussion boards, but is generally faster and outputs smaller, semantically correct XHTML-compliant pages.

    Sounds great! Now let’s see how easy it is to modify

  2. Kylark Says:
    October 2nd, 2005 at 3:52 pm

    I’ve used phpBB a lot, and from a user perspective it’s just great.

  3. Tim Boucher Says:
    October 2nd, 2005 at 3:58 pm

    It seems really code heavy. What’s so great about it from a user perspective?

  4. Kylark Says:
    October 2nd, 2005 at 4:49 pm

    Well, admittedly, I don’t have experience with a lot of different forum apps. I used to post obsessively at Pocket PC Thoughts, and it just seemed like phpBB was great as far as keeping track of different users and posts. Much better than, say, the RI forums, or some other basic forum apps that I’ve seen. I don’t know much about the others you listed, though. (Maybe I’ll go look at them…)

  5. Kylark Says:
    October 2nd, 2005 at 4:51 pm

    Barbelith is pretty!

    I like punBB. Phorum looks a little more difficult to follow.

  6. Tim Boucher Says:
    October 2nd, 2005 at 4:58 pm

    Yeah, I’ve gone with punBB. I’ll post a link once it’s up and running



SURROUND YOURSELF WITH STRENGTH.