Creation of a new forum - want for free!

Ok, in searching TSG quickly, have found the following:
http://forums.techguy.org/web-development/381047-making-forum-2.html
http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/425452-forum-hosting-softwae.html?
http://forums.techguy.org/business-applications/449548-creating-my-own-forum.html
http://forums.techguy.org/web-development/459740-forum-site-help.html?
http://forums.techguy.org/web-development/469521-i-want-start-my-own.html?

Google gives many links too:
http://www.myfreeforum.org/
http://www.proboards.com/index.html
http://forum.snitz.com/

and so on...

Each of the above TSG threads had various thoughts, ideas, opinions, suggestions, and the such. As I and a few others are interested in the creation of a new forum [for our HS alma mater], and have little desire to spend much $$$ in a host and really don't know best means how to start such, thought here is to start a thread that combines the best of the above threads, and add updated thoughts into one thread - for the most part seems that the above 5 threads, for example, are all asking quite similar question - and getting at times quite different directions to go to...

Anyhow, to get this started, if a person desired to have a forum created, and at the lowest possible cost [ie: FREE! ], with the most security, and some nice features, what would be the optimum recommendations?

 

www.phpbb.com

Free!

AFAIK it's about as secure as it can get, it's getting quite old now so any security issues have been found and fixed. It just recently underwent a large security audit which added many updates. Of course any forum is not completely secure, as with any software you have to keep up with the updates.

The plain vanilla install has the features you would expect from any forum. The best thing about phpbb is the vast library of modifications avaialble for it.

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=15

You may want to give it a few weeks though as that has been superseded by the newest version which is in beta testing... it's been a long wait....

http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=24053

 

The min one can spend is for the domain name and host it at a free hosting provider (which could even be me ). Or go to http://www.zeeblo.com for a free cPanel hosting account without a domain name. Then install phpBB from there and voila, you have your forum ready without ads

There are many more free forum providers.

 

This site offers free phpBB forum hosting:

GigaForums


This is another site that offers free forum hosting. I can't link to it for some reason. When I go to preview my post it comes up as *****. Anyways, heres the site. I added spaces so it wouldnt block the site.

I N V I S I O N F R E E . C O M

 

I just started with MyBBoard.com to put the forum in my domain (www.domain.com/forum). They are easy to use and free. Just make sure you aren't using MS Hosting or you won't be able to CHMOD the forum files to install it.

 

Go with Next BBS
http://nextbbs.com/

You can download it here
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=121332


It's a whole new generation of Open Source out there and NextBBS is the leader of that generation. Packed with cutting edge features, it will blow you away!

 

They would still need hosting, but yeah, phpBB rocks! Especially phpBB 3.0 (which I have beta tested myself).

 

If he wanted to host his own message board, and free hosting, he could go with NextBBS and take the free hosting offer in my signature

 

With due respect sir, your free hosting offer needs forum registration and posting. Is there any way to bypass that?

 

It's only 5 posts for the basic plan, you could post 5 times then never post again

 

Thanks for the suggestions - am collecting them, and will be discussing w/ the group in next few weeks.