BB/Forum software suggestions

[Greg Rundlett]

Hi Cole,

I have used both phpBB and FUDForum.  They are both excellent forums, 
however I prefer FUDForum.  I believe that it is more 'purist' in 
pursuit of scratching an itch instead of code looking for a business 
model.  In other words, the author(s) led by Ilia Alshanetsky are 
concerned with writing good forum software.  And it's really the only 
one that I know of that truly supports threaded forum views.  Check out 
http://fudforum.org/features.php

I don't think any CMS/Framework forum compares to a *real* forum if you 
truly want forums.  

That said, some (I believe Post-Nuke is in this category) offer enough 
of an API so that there are supported modules for embedding true forum 
software into the framework of the CMS (so you get unified login or 
whatever).  And some forums offer "embedded" install-types to make it 
integrate more with an existing website.

So, I know you asked for forum recommendations, but if you're looking 
for a full-blown 'portal' then you will find yourself evaluating 
CMS/Frameworks like Tiki, Post-Nuke, ezPublish etc. b/c they offer a 
tantalizing set of features.  The downside is that there is so much to 
learn if you really want to get deep into the code.  ezPublish is my 
latest foray, and it appears to be well-planned, well-written and 
object-oriented, but *voluminous* with hundreds of class files, and 
since they have a service business model, it seems they have stripped 
out any comments from the code.