Online discussion forum software

A group of the people in my neighborhood are interested in setting up an online discussion forum to talk about the issues concerning the community. Does anyone know what the easiest and cheapest (or free) way to do this is? We'd like it to be in a TT-like format where posts are organized according to topic. Any suggestions? Are there any free options out there?

www.phpbb.com has a free php forum, not as good as invision used by TT, but free all the same

Not quite the same thing - but you might also achieve what you want with Serendipity which is free and dead simple to get going. If you can set up a mysql database with name and password it is soooooo simple.

http://www.s9y.org/

Basically you could have 1 admin controller (or more of course) that can set up the categories of topics, and then people can add comments moderated or unmoderated. So might do the trick.

Example here - but I don't use mine much (but I should 'cos google loves this stuff)

http://www.androv-medical.com/serendipity/

I dont know what the exact policy regarding these things is, but Editor Bob has created some private sub forums for specialist member groups. Perhaps you could ask him if he could create a private subforum for your neighbourhood group, particularly if members of this group would be interested in other areas of the forum too.

Free and full of adverts, and nowhere near as featured as invision or vbulletin, but you might want to look at proboards.com if hosting is also an issue.

SMF (Simple Machines Forum) seems pretty good (they call it "professional grade"), and is free!

Stick to one of the more well known board software. Theres more support, Help and Add'ons avail. to help you in your mission..

Invision Powerboard
VBulletin
PHPbb

Thanks for the replies...

Are all these idiot-proof? I've never done anything like this (absolutely no experience whatsoever) and don't know how to set up a mysql database but am willing to learn if it's not too difficult. I don't want to spend a lot of time moderating and trouble-shooting... just want to get it up and running. It will have 40 members maximum.

Hi,

is this website powered by the free SMF package?

Just interested to know, since I want to install and test this on my local machine. Or is there another good website creation packages that you are aware of?

Googling will be easy.

Topics merged by admin

Toytown uses Invision. I think that's what you were asking.

Yes,

Thanks STB