Seeking recommendations for company forums

[HalWhitewyrm]

Hello. I have been thinking of adding forums to our company website, and I'd like to ask other publishers for recommendations. I'm interested in an affordable forum service that I don't need to host and that I can customize to match the company's look. Extra features beyond that would be nice, depending on the price.

Any and all information on the subject will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Red Spire Press]

We've been using PHPBB2 now for a while and it's great. The price is right -- $0 -- and it's fully featured and customizable. One particularly nice feature is dynamic image-based authentication, which requires that users enter digits that are dynamically output as a jpg upon registration. This prevents spam bots from signing up on your site and posting junk. The administration tool is easy to use and forums/groups/permissions are easy to manage. You mentioned not wanting to host it but it's really quite painless. All you'll need is MySql access, which usually runs a few dollars a month at most. The setup utility will take you through all of the configuration so you don't need to do any tinkering behind the scenes.

 

[FoolishFrost]

You can take a look at my site and see if you like the forums there...

Later,

 

[jerichothebard]

The problem with PHPBB is the bandwidth drain. If you don't have unlimited bandwidth on your site, even a moderate amount of traffic can add up quickly.

I strongly recommend EZBoards. They're relatively cheap, don't charge you for bandwidth, and easy to set up and customize. We use them for StoryART Games' internal contributor forum (and look for the coming public forums soon). The Game Mechanics and Malhavoc also make use of them, I believe.


jtb.

 

[Brian-MGT]

If your interested in forums hosting contact me brian@maxgaming.net and we can set up and host forums for you for a small fee. Or if you want you can switch your hosting to us and we can include the forums.

 

[jmucchiello]

I strongly recommend EZBoards. They're relatively cheap, don't charge you for bandwidth, and easy to set up and customize. We use them for StoryART Games' internal contributor forum (and look for the coming public forums soon). The Game Mechanics and Malhavoc also make use of them, I believe.

I use it too and there's another reason to recommend them: login accounts. If you roll your own phpbb or some other forum software, users need to setup an account on your server to login. By using an existing forum site, users may already have an account. I don't know about you, but I can't stand having to create a login for yet another webforum.

 

[johnsemlak]

Do you know how many EZ users have that 'universal account' or whatever? Just curious.

I too find it frustrating to register for yet another webforum, but the first couple of times I registered at forums hosted by EZ Board, I didn't bother with the universal account and went local (not realizing I might eventually want access to a large number of forums hosted there).

I've since not bothered getting the universal account because I'd never get the username I want.

Registering for the universal account seems 'scarier' for us non-websavvy typs as well, IME.

 

[jmucchiello]

Registering for the universal account seems 'scarier' for us non-websavvy typs as well, IME.

Well, some people will make it easier on themselves.

 

[Warden]

We're looking to switch to new forums as well -- our old ones crapped out and there's been no help whatsoever from the host company to get it fixed.

 

[Kiln Publications]

We use phpbb and our server is under lunarpages.com who also has it very easy to have phpbb set up for your account. After several steps they will load it up for you under your control board..... The only thing I didn't like about ezboards was if you didn't pay you had ads at the top.