* phpBB - all you want in a BBS and more - for free!
Over the past few years, I have become more and more impressed with the scripting language PHP (although my favorite is still Python). What is so interesting about PHP is that developers have produced some remarkable products (free open source and commercial), and for some reason these products usually have great presentations: Their output tends to look good and they almost always function elegantly.
Today’s topic is a product that is no exception to this trend. PhpBB (see editorial links below) is a “high powered, fully scalable, and highly customizable open source bulletin board package” that is one of the best bulletin board systems I have seen.
PhpBB has a great interface, is quick and easy to install and configure, is simple to administer, and is well documented and supported, and runs with MySQL, MS-SQL, PostgreSQL or Access/ODBC database servers.
The feature list of phpBB is extensive and includes a comprehensive access control and management system; support for cookie and URI-based sessions; an unlimited number of forums that can be organized into as many categories as needed; unlimited user accounts and groups; personal profiles; a private messaging system; forum moderation facilities; private forums that can be optionally restricted to specified user groups; and a search facility.
In addition, forum messages can be formatted using fonts, styles and sizes with quoting, code display, image posting and automatic URL linking, and support standard and extended BBCode tags (phpBB’s own tagging system) and controlled HTML tags. Polls can be added to posts and e-mail notification of replies to topics can be generated. In short, there’s little in the way of creating, running and managing forums that you can’t do with phpBB.
As the phpBB site accurately and immodestly notes: “phpBB is open-source software so it has no fees, no subscriptions and no restrictions on modifications. Couple this with a thriving and friendly phpBB community and you have a killer solution for creating communities on your site!”
