Forum Hosting: An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site. It is the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board, and a technological evolution of the dialup bulletin board system. From a technological standpoint, forums or boards are web applications managing user-generated content. Forums consist of a group of contributors who usually must be registered with the system, becoming known as members. The members submit topics for discussion known as threads and communicate with each other using publicly visible messages referred to as posts or private messaging. Forums usually restrict anonymous visitors to only view the contents posted.
bbPress is forum software with a twist from the creators of WordPress. Have you ever been frustrated with forum or bulletin board software that was slow bloated and always got your server hacked? bbPress is focused on web standards, ease of use, ease of integration, and speed. We're focused on keeping things as small and light as possible while still allowing for great add on features through our extensive plugin system. What does all that mean? bbPress is lean, mean and ready to take on any job you throw at it.
phpBB is one of the most powerful and commonly used forum systems. It is great for new users as well as more technically oriented users. With phpbb you can either create a simple form for you and your friends or a more advanced forum for larger communities. phpBB is an open source project and can be installed and used for free with fantastico. phpBB has a powerful but easy to work with administration panel. With almost no effort you can create unlimited number of forums, categories, permissions, word sensors, mass emailing, smilies, polls & more.
PunBB is a fast and lightweight PHP-powered discussion board. PunBB's primary goals are to be faster, smaller and less graphically intensive as compared to other discussion boards. PunBB has fewer features than many other discussion boards, but is generally faster and outputs smaller, semantically correct XHTML-compliant pages. PunBB is written in PHP and thus requires the PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. PunBB also requires a database in which all forum data is stored. For that purpose PunBB supports MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite.
Simple Machines Forum or SMF is a free, professional grade software package that allows you to set up your own online community in minutes. SMF's powerful custom made template engine puts you in full control of the lay-out of your message board and with our unique SSI (Server Side Includes) function you can let your forum and your website interact with each other. SMF is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database. It is designed to provide you with all the features of a bulletin board while having a minimal impact on the server. Below are the best SimpleMachinesForum web hosting companies.
