Free Web Forum Software

The ‘forum' or ‘discussion board' plays a major part on most successful Websites, providing a place for regular visitors to discuss topics the site covers. This creates a community and adds ‘stickiness' to your site, giving people an incentive to come back time and time again. Take a look at the many hundreds of thousands of Websites with forums, and you'll see that various systems are employed to provide the discussion board features – posting, voting, private messaging, and thread categories, all of which play a part in the standard feature list for the big forum systems.
In this article, I'll download, install and set up 5 of the biggest and more popular forum applications.
I've chosen the systems based on the lists at Hotscripts.com, and my own past experience and knowledge. I have only chosen free systems, as that it is what most Website owners use, and because of the difficulty involved in acquiring copies of paid for systems for review. As a consequence of this approach, I've had to leave out the extremely popular vBulletin. I have also chosen PHP, ASP and CGI systems to give you as wide a choice as possible as you decide which system you want to go for.
The following applications are included in this review. Each is freely available for download from its associated Website:
phpBB - PHP
Invision Power Board- PHP
Snitz - ASP
Web Wiz Forums - ASP
IkonBoard - CGI

AEF

Advanced Electron Forum
Simple bulletin board software. Free.Developer:ElectronPlatform:PHP

ASP-DEv XM Forums

Linear software newly rewritten as XML-based forum. Available as inexpensive hosted service, option for commercial license, or free with 'powered by' logo.Developer:ASP ResourcesPlatform:Windows
Basic Bulletin Board Script
See WebBBS.

Ceilidh

Displays the developer's banner ads. (Buying the commercial version lets you eliminate the ads.) Features e-mail notification and listserv capabilities.Developer: Lilikoi SoftwarePlatforms: UNIX, Windows, OS/2, Macintosh

ConferWeb

Simple system with linear discussions. Also suitable for use as a guestbook. Free for non-profit use. All sites must register.Developer: Brian JohnsonPlatform: Macintosh

Discus

Uses a tree structure for categorizing topics and subtopics, but each discussion is presented as a continuous, linear stream of responses. Available in English and several other languages.Developer: DiscusWare, LLCPlatforms: UNIX, Windows (written in Perl)

WikiWikiWeb

A simple but powerful tool that's unlike anything else. Essentially, a wiki is an open-ended, interlinked set of web pages that anyone can edit or add to. A wiki can be used as a discussion forum, a database, an organically grown encyclopedia... you name it. There are now many versions, written for many different platforms. A list is available here.Developer: Ward Cunningham and othersPlatforms: Many

W3 Interactive Talk (WIT)

Highly structured forum software designed for group decision making. Probably the first Web forum system (created June 1994). Unknown if still available.[Description in WWW Unleashed]Developer: Ari Luotonen, CERNPlatform: UNIX

YaBB SE

Enhanced version of YaBB. Not supported since March 2004. The development team has gone on to create SMF.Developer: variousPlatforms: UNIX, Windows (written in Perl)