100% free forum

hi there
are there any forums that are completely free, including not having to display the copyright at the of the page?
im looking to setup a forum on a website but i want to tweak the design so it looks like it belongs to the site and not a third party company

or maybe i shoul look for a forum script. i dont mind setuing one up, but i dont know where i can find one thats constantyl being worked on (have a aka support team). if anybody could point me to one id appretiate it.

 

thanks for the post. i have some ideas that came up. thanks

 

theres several out there, many free ones better then SMF and phpBB. I dont know the names, but a few searches on the web should help you find them.

 

Stopped reading right there.

 

pretty unusual replies here
i havent found any free forums
but paying a small fee can remove copyright
im glad i helped one guy, had a vague reply from another, and a giggle from the reply to the vague reply
lol

 

*snerk* That was funny.

Any GPL or BSD licensed forum will let you remove the copyright - they can't legally stop you, however phpBB at least requires you to leave the link in if you want support on their forums. If you're pretty familiar with running php apps as a rule, that may not be an issue.

SMF is not 'open source', it's simply 'free', so you can't use that for your purposes.

Vanilla and PunBB are lightweight solutions that you may want to look at. MyBB is more full-featured, but as I mention elsewhere, lacks a lot of polish. BBPress is slow and only really has any worth for integrating into WordPress.

Drupal is the most obvious option, but it's not particularly known for its ease of use, and getting it working as a smooth community takes a lot of work.

 

thanks for that vekseid

 

phpBB is best. You should contact them for copyright removal.

 

I believe MyBBBoard.net now allows you to remove the link due to them going open source, however keep in mind that if you do remove the link, they won't give you support on their forum and if you use a theme that someone else created you probably will have to keep their link in unless you contact them.

Also, I don't think the copyright on the footer is a big deal...Even VBulletin requires it and you have to PAY for that...sure users will find out what software you used but if they wanted to create a forum themselves, they'll find the software anyway...

 

I have recently started building a forum.. I have tested all of the open source scripts available out there. But, SMF is simple for newbies and very friendly interface. The best part of it is their great support
Cheers