Hard Light Productions Forums

Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Fineus on November 14, 2002, 12:55:47 pm

Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Fineus on November 14, 2002, 12:55:47 pm
Hey all, I need to find a program/script to run a good, cheap message board/forum setup for my colleges Student Union website. Nothing as complicated/in depth as vB or UBB, just a basic deal - doesn't even have to support image posting in threads or anything.

If anyone has any ideas/advice then please let me know ASAP - thanks :)
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: an0n on November 14, 2002, 12:56:52 pm
phpBB2 (www.phpbb.com)
Invision Board (www.invisionboard.com)
CuteCast (http://www.artscore.net)

In order of kick-ass-ness.

Don't use IkonBoard or YaBB. They are teh suck™.
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Stealth on November 14, 2002, 01:04:19 pm
grab an ez-board... they can be configured pretty well i've heard.


and they're free
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: an0n on November 14, 2002, 01:05:57 pm
..............................Y'know, either I'm stoned or you just said to use EZ-Board.

They're fine if you want banners, pop-ups, crappy controls and don't want to actually use them.
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Fineus on November 14, 2002, 01:15:05 pm
I have to admit they were my first consideration and chucked out based on the hope I could find something better elsewhere.

In the meantime, I'm not sure what my server supports... no mention of MySQL...
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: an0n on November 14, 2002, 01:18:58 pm
Where's the Student Union website? And who hosts it? If it's on the college/uni servers you could probably just ask the server admins to install a database for you.


*seems to remember coming across a non-MySQL forum somewhere that worked with on-server databases*

Infact, I think it was CuteCast. But you still need Perl on yer server.
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Warlock on November 14, 2002, 01:19:59 pm
If you want to check out a PHPbb in action link is in my siggy.

We've had a few bugs recently ,.. but nothing big

Things like the script assigned passwords don't work (if a user doesn't choose their own password the emailed ones never are recognized by the script)

The only big thing was the other day suddenly the art forum just lost ALL it's threads, but that seems to have been a server issue, if I recall my friend that owns the server said the files themselves had been wiped.
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Fineus on November 14, 2002, 01:28:05 pm
an0n: www.worthingcollegesu.com

I really don't think it's got any kind of support at all for this kinda thing... it'll have to be some kind of HTML thing if such exists.
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: an0n on November 14, 2002, 01:37:14 pm
Y'know, you could just make a section here, set it's display order to 0 and assign it a template that in no way linked to the main HLP index, other forums or memberlist....or search, thus completely isolating it from the rest of the board, except by way of putting in the right forumid in the address bar. Then stick sub-forums under it, et voila.
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Fineus on November 14, 2002, 01:38:51 pm
I'd need to ask Shrikey about it - but it is a nice idea. And doesn't seem to have any disadvantages either, since I already know my way around vB a fair bit....

Thanks for all the help mate :)
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Riven on November 14, 2002, 03:19:28 pm
www.scripthost.com

no frills but works and is hosted by them with no ads.
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Windrunner on November 14, 2002, 03:32:55 pm
try out this forum T. its simple an clean. although its an ASP script
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Fineus on November 14, 2002, 04:01:34 pm
I like that Windrunner but it's in German... and that's absolutly no good for my college ;)
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Windrunner on November 14, 2002, 04:03:08 pm
actually its in swedish. but it vould do no good to translate
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Fineus on November 14, 2002, 04:12:17 pm
Sorry, my bad :) Either way if it's not in English I can't do anything with it - sorry.
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: WMCoolmon on November 14, 2002, 05:43:05 pm
iKonboard (http://www.ikonboard.com), uses CGI/Perl/DBM or CGI/Perl/MySQL. :yes:
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Zeronet on November 14, 2002, 06:23:29 pm
Quote
Originally posted by an0n
phpBB2 (www.phpbb.com)
Invision Board (www.invisionboard.com)
CuteCast (http://www.artscore.net)

In order of kick-ass-ness.

Don't use IkonBoard or YaBB. They are teh suck™.


:yes:
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Stealth on November 14, 2002, 06:57:06 pm
yeah, that sounds like a good idea.  just go make your own HLP hidden forum and host it on HLP... sounds like a good idea to me
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Stryke 9 on November 14, 2002, 06:59:11 pm
phpBB is excellent- pretty much the best format out there, and free. EZboard is easily the worst.
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Anaz on November 14, 2002, 07:00:17 pm
just make sure you make it look different from all of the other people who use phpbb and don't do anything to make it look different from stock...
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: WMCoolmon on November 14, 2002, 07:39:45 pm
Quote
Don't use IkonBoard or YaBB. They are teh suck™.

I'd like to know why, I've used iB3 for a year and haven't had any permanent problems beyond accidentally duplicating my members group. Nearly 20,000 posts, too.
PHPBB does look good, but I don't have access to a MySQL database...
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: vadar_1 on November 14, 2002, 11:03:56 pm
phpBB is a great forum if you have database, installation includes uploading the file, and running install.php. Boom, your done, everythings automated. If not, then go with the cgi script Ikonboard, I used to use it, and it works good... good for a cgi script.
Title: Free Message Board Scripts?
Post by: Fineus on November 15, 2002, 03:21:15 am
Thanks again for all the info guys, I'm afraid the servers are somewhat basic and don't support much in the way of anythnig so I'd have to mess with asking them to install things and so on... I'll take a look at what you guys have given me though and see what I can do.