Best FREE forum software?

Can anyone advice me on the best FREE forum software on the basis of these 3 criteria.

1) Security
2) Protection against Spam
3) Revenue sharing

Thanks

 

phpBB can do ad sharing but I'm not sure about SMF.

I would recommend SMF though. It has really started to pull itself together in terms of themes. It's looking beautiful. Mods and Themes are also very easy to install.

 

What about security? and protection against spam?

 

SMF is probably more secure in phpBB in many ways. Not too sure about spam though.

 

vote for SMF here too

 

SMF is best free avalible

 

It's been a week since I decided to put a forum on my site. After researching for a week, my choices have come down to two phpbb or smf. My basic requirement are the below three:

1) Security (Against Hackers) - Coz on google I have just come across far too many results of forums getting hacked and stuff.

2) Spam Protection - Is Captha a very good way to prevent spam posts or can it be bypassed easily?

3) SEO

4) REVENUE SHARING

5) Image attachment to the post. And capability to automatically host it on my own servers.

6) Future proofing


Keep in mind this is the first time I will be using a forum. My final choices came down to SMF and phpbb. For my selected website I would be targetted by a lot of spam bots. So could someone here suggest me which Forum software would best suit my needs based on the above six criterias.

P.S: I read the earlier replies.. but i missed mentioning 3 more criterias.. can some who has used these forums just reply in terms of all the criterias...

 

If you have serious concerns about spambots then phpbb may not be for you, they're making a lot of progress but currently you'll need to use one or of the mods which are available. I don't know how comfortable you are with modifying scripts but in phpbb they're more complicated than the modern plugin approach to mods.

phpBB is the only forum software I've used and I can't say how any others would meet your needs. Based purely on the security aspects of your needs though you may also like to look at fudforum. I don't know how well it meets your other criteria.

 

I'm using Community Server 2.0 www.communityserver.org.... Its free, but is limited to things you may want it to do... I have found it to be very successful for my business.

 

I just checked with the guys at Phpbb and even they are very skeptical about the spam bot scene... it seems phpbb is the easiest target for them. I just saw a coupla guys who are using Phpbb3 beta 2 (Olympus) complaining about spambots. And some guy joined SMF coz of it.

I am still on the lookout. I checked fudforum, but they dont have the mods that I need. So not a choice. Right now its just neck and neck between SMF and PHPBB.

 

PHPBB is easier to hack because it's open source - so be careful with that.

I would recommend paying for VBulletin cuz it's the best forum package i know.
It will safe you a lot of time and trouble in the future.

Didier

 

SMF all the way! , I own several SMF based community sites and they are all pretty fast and SMF is easy to navigate.

 

Made my choice - SMF

 

Iv always liked Invisionfree but the security isnt all that great. But the custimization is.

 

I hate InvisionFree. The ads are very intruding and the customer service is horrible. I had to wait a whole month for even one reply for a transfer to IPB (because I hated IF), and then even after that support was minimal. InvisionFree boards also have the fastest-dying community for some reason. Security is very bad also, I had my board hacked and lost 3000 members.

Conclusion: InvisionFree is an absolute no-no.

 

I don't think there is any particular forum software that can protect you against spam. Spam nowadays is real - registered by real humans, that's why they are bypassing email and image verification processes.

 

I will vote for SMF but it still lacks Revenue sharing mod

 

My vote also for SMF because of lot of themes , mods and is much secure.

BTW I am using it on my site www.mob.meethere.org , but still not developed

 

I once saw a free Ajax fourm, trying to find it right now with no luck.

 

I'm starting to sound like a scratched record on this, but I'm pretty keen on vanilla at the moment. Not implemented it yet, but from the work I've done it looks good as a different take on forums, although probably more suited towards a discussion forum on specific topics rather than a more general 'talking-shop'.

Anyway it's certainly worth a look...if for nothing more than taking a different perspective...