Webmaster's Section: Forum Services
Almost every web site needs a Message Board. Especially Harry Potter sites. It can be hard to find a good service. Luckily, I've done that for you!
First, ask yourself a question: Do I need a hosted service, or can I host it myself? I reccommend hosted unless you have at least 100MB of storage set aside for it -- and a lot of bandwidth.
Hosted Services
- Invisionfree - Based on the popular and fee-based Invision Power Board, Invisionfree is the free, undisputed (well, almost undisputed) king. You can change thousands of settings, create your own stylesheet, replace any image or button, assign moderators, and more. Plus, it has storage space for users to upload signature images, avatars, etc. Need I say more? Oh yeah, you can even download thousands of third-party modifications for it. Don't bother with other services! Use Invisionfree!
- [more coming soon (for weird webmasters who don't like Invisionfree)]
Non-hosted Services
- Invision Power Board - The non-free, more powerful version of Invisionfree. It has all of Invisionfree's features, and a lot of others as well.
- VBulletin - The system used to run COSForums.
- PHP BB - PHP BB stands for PHP Hypertext Proccessor Bulletin Board. It's not as widely used as VBulletin and Invision, but It's free. It's not very user-friendly though.
