Foo - Need to create a discussion forum for local cycling team

I'm updating a website for a local cycling team and they asked me to set up a discussion forum for races and such. I've never done such a thing. Have any of you's guys set one up?

If so can you point me in the right direction.

I'm heading home right now so I'll check back in tomorrow morning.

Thank you for any help.

One of the easiest I've set up for your own hosting is this one (http://www.yabbforum.com/). It's free, and you don't have to be a programmer. Get the files to the server and use your FTP program to set the permissions, and you're good to go.

There are some free ones that you don't host out there, some are OK, most are slow at least some of the time, and many have ads that you have to tolerate.

If you decide to go with YaBB, I'd be willing to provide direct help to the extent that I can, we should be able to get it running.

Our club uses Yahoo Groups... works pretty well.

Yahoo groups works very well, and if that sort of solution fits the bill, I highly recommend it. It's not a discussion forum though, it's an e-mail list. There are advantages to both, depending on what's wanted.

I personally think phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com/) is one of the better free forum softwares. If you already have a web host, they may have a pre-packaged install for you to use that makes setup even more of a breeze. It requires a little setup after installation but it's not rocket science. If push comes to shove, I could help get it installed for free. It just takes a few minutes.

I'll agree on the above. I think I helped someone set it up once, but it's been a long time, and it's certainly widely used. I just don't have very much experience with it myself, since I had found the YaBB and got it working well for me. I believe that the php requires a database server, either MySQL or something else, which I didn't have on my server at the time, and YaBB doesn't require it.

I don't know if it's the server it's running on or what, but one of the Mac/Vintage Apple forums I'm on uses it, and it's horrendously slow all the time. It uses flat files, which is usually okay for a small forum. If it starts to take off though, or if you end up with a quarter-million posts after a few years, you'll need a database. Switching to a database from a forum like YaBB is really a pain in the butt.

The forum I help admin (I'm the server guy) was originally using UBB Classic which uses flat files. Then, after about half a million posts it became downright unbearable regardless how much horsepower or RAM we threw at it. It took me a week to get it all imported to UBB Threads (MySQL) and eventually we abandoned it for vBulletin which is the same thing BikeForums uses. I know plenty of phpBB boards that are running strong with a lot of users though, which is why I recommended it if you can get it to work.

I personally think phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com/) is one of the better free forum softwares. If you already have a web host, they may have a pre-packaged install for you to use that makes setup even more of a breeze. It requires a little setup after installation but it's not rocket science. If push comes to shove, I could help get it installed for free. It just takes a few minutes.


I looked into this one. It sounds like a better free forum. Does it log in capabilities?

And if you don't mind, I would LOVE some help. I know that I'll be the admin and moderator for it.

I looked into this one. It sounds like a better free forum. Does it log in capabilities?

And if you don't mind, I would LOVE some help. I know that I'll be the admin and moderator for it.

PhPBB has a lot of the same features of vbulletin but is free (including login last time I checked). Where it lacks is some "high end" features and support. Vbulletin has a lot of long time programmers that work on it all the time and offer support at their own bb. PHPBB doesn't do this on the same level, but there also aren't as many features to work with so it doesn't need it.

Personally, if I ever had the time I would use phpBB, but I barely have time off let alone time to make a bb.