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Businesses The Internet

Best Web Forums for Businesses? 37

Posted by Cliff from the a-year-to-the-minute dept.
ClintJCL asks: "I've recently been tasked to create an online web forum for my employer. Actually, they said 'weblog' but when I got more clarification, it is not really a blog but more of a message forum that is what they want. How do I find a good forum? I have looked into many, many forums, and there are simply too many out there to compare them all myself. Is there a website that reviews online forums and their software? Is there somebody who is experienced in doing this, that perhaps has some good advice?" We last touched on this subject exactly a year ago, and it seems that businesses are warming to the idea. Have new and better options popped up in the intervening time?

"I had started one with a particular provider and worked a few hours on customizing it. Then they wiped my settings back to the defaults without explanation. This is -exactly- the type of thing I would wish to avoid.

The forum would have to support privacy (only approved users get access, since this would be for internal communication only), and it would have to support attachments (since one of the main purposes is for us to store our official documents there).

I strongly suggested that we run one on our own servers, but it seems that this is not an option, so we must look for a 3rd party to supply us with the forum."
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Best Web Forums for Businesses? More

Best Web Forums for Businesses?

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  • Prefab NNTP Solution? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RaboKrabekian ( 461040 ) on Monday January 19, 2004 @04:46PM (#8024362) Journal
    What about setting up an nntp server, and then using a newsreader?

    Or, if they want it in website form, using some sort of prefab browser-based newsreader. Does anyone have a suggestion?
    • That would be a cool solution if only there were free Newsreaders which weren't buggy, confusing, or stuck in the 1980s.

      If there are, please point me to one. FreeAgent is the best I've ever seen, and it's still rather awkward.
      • Mozilla Thunderbird works well for me. Simple interface, and reasonably stable, even though it's only at version 0.4.

        Or you could use Outlook Express! If its a typical office most users will be familiar with it already. Though it may lead to problems of un-snipped, top posting in HTML.
        • The point was we needed a WEB thing. Becuase not everyone is a geek like us. Hell I've been reading newsgroups since I used telnet over a 14.4kbps connection in 1990, but like hell would I ever use any NNTP-based service for anything mission critical for an enterprise. Teach employees who barely know how to use Outlook to read newsgroups? That would waste company money in hours lost.
    • ... can be seen at big-boards.com [big-boards.com], which inventories the Web's busiest bulletin boards. The busiest boards are usually custom jobs, but they tend to be very light in features; they need to be with millions of daily visits. Otherwise, vBulletin and phpBB rule the day. Of 483 boards, the breakdown goes:

      vBulletin: 295
      phpBB: 34
      Invision: 23
      UBB: 22

      I've got vBulletin 3.0 RC 2 running on an urban planning-related forum [cyburbia.org] that I run, and I'm extremely happy with it.

  • I've heard of one... (Score:4, Funny)

    by FroMan ( 111520 ) on Monday January 19, 2004 @04:54PM (#8024448) Homepage Journal
    Its called slashcode I think...

    Um, flashcode... No.. that's not it...

    Um, lashdot... No, that't not quite right...

    Hmmm... try this: http://www.slashcode.com/

  • phpBB (Score:4, Informative)

    by TheWanderingHermit ( 513872 ) on Monday January 19, 2004 @04:54PM (#8024452)
    It might be too lightweight for what you want, but I've found I can do what you've asked (you need to add a mod for attachments, though). I think the upload directory had to be chmod 777, but I think you can put it outside of the html tree.

    It's also free, open source, has good community support, is easily modified (with many mods available), works with a selection of databases, and you don't have to rely on your host provider for anything other than the space and a db program like MySQL (unless you can install it separately).

    • Re:phpBB (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Kethinov ( 636034 )
      phpBB is NOT lightweight. Granted it's not the most bloated forum on earth, it does have tons of totally pointless "features" that go beyond the scope of most websites. If you want true minimalism, try mine [halo43.com] out. Of course mine is still in the developmental stages and there are bugs. But it is totally bloat-free.

      Okay, done with my shameless plug. Move along now.
      • You're quite right, phpBB isn't lightweight. But there's no need to resort to half-coded forums, either (but best of luck to parent on your continuing development).

        Try PunBB [punbb.org] or Phorum [phorum.org], for good examples of lighter-weight BBs.

        On the other hand, the original poster needs a 3rd party forum provider. Hmm. You can get this sort of thing as part of massively expensive "portal" services from companies who also want to manage your email, VOIP, etc., etc., though many of these have now gone out of business simp

    • One thing to be aware of...

      Adding the file upload mod creates some incompatibilities for many of the other mods and some of the themes.

      I've been running one of these boards for about 6 months... this is my only complaint. I'm also a member of a couple phpBB forums that support 200+ concurrent users.

  • Invision (Score:5, Funny)

    by L. VeGas ( 580015 ) on Monday January 19, 2004 @04:57PM (#8024478) Homepage Journal
    Invision does all this. [invisionboard.com] pretty darn well.

    What you should do is set up your own external server and charge your company anonymously as a 3rd party. Not only can you get a few bucks, you could also get all of your company's paperwork. You could also pretend to crash it occassionally and automagically retrieve it, thereby ensuring job security.
    • Invision also takes time to load pages, requires people to login multiple times, slows down the browser, and so on. It's also got so much going on, it's hard to find anything.

      I went to site that used it and got scared away.

  • Vbulletin (Score:3, Informative)

    by toygeek ( 473120 ) on Monday January 19, 2004 @04:59PM (#8024501) Journal
    Vbulletin is a PHP/MySQL based solution that I believe would work. It costs a bit of money ($200) but its well worth it. I run PHPbb at www.battleborncruisers.com and it works very nice for the price ($0)

    • Agreed (Score:3, Informative)

      by waldoj ( 8229 ) *
      We vBulletin for nancies.org [nancies.org]'s discussion boardS [nancies.org], as we have for the past three years, and we're really happy with it. It's against my grain to pay for software (as opposed to writing it myself or using free software), particularly one with as many good free options as web-based discussion boards, but each annual reevaluation of the market has led me to conclude that vBulletin is the best choice out there. It has good support, a nice feature set, it uses MySQL and PHP (a major bonus, as far as I'm concern
  • they have something excellent for such a thing.

  • Lithium (Score:4, Informative)

    by linuxwrangler ( 582055 ) on Monday January 19, 2004 @05:25PM (#8024763)
    You might want to check out Lithium Technologies [lithium.com]. This is what they do and their customer list includes Dell, AT&T, Nintendo and a host of other big-name clients.

  • I've been using UBB threads (php + MySQL (et al)) for a public forum for over a year and it has been robust and easy to maintain. Its cost is about the same as vBulletin ($229). Using it for intranet, authentication integration with existing systems will be something to worry about.

    OTOH, back in early 1990's era SGI, NNTP/trn was the only way to go. sgi.general, sgi.bad-attitude... ahh, those were the days. Corporate YP solved auth.

  • Yahoo Groups? [yahoo.com]

    Ha ha, that would be funny...

    mycompany@yahoogroups.com and then all the ads and random named spammers come along.

    The sad part is many small businesses still use free email for their company email, i wouldnt be suprised if there were businesses using this.

    I agree with phpBB, doesnt get any better.

  • Why not a Wiki? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ThenAgain ( 627263 ) on Monday January 19, 2004 @06:14PM (#8025275)
    I've had success with Wikis in organizing office proceedures, documentation, logs, etc. They take just a little more lernin' than a simple "post your message here" arrangement, but they reward you with the ability to create flexible and extensible structures quickly. I use TWiki [twiki.org] because it has a flexible calendar plugin [twiki.org]. There are several open-source Wiki's available.

    Most modern Wiki software (TWiki included) has revision control so no matter what they do they can't break it. The hard part is getting the luddites to adopt it [twiki.org]. If that gets tough you can set up a sensible structure yourself and use TWiki's comment plugin [twiki.org] to make it easy on them.

  • Drupal? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Asprin ( 545477 ) <(moc.oohay) (ta) (dlonrasg)> on Monday January 19, 2004 @06:15PM (#8025289) Homepage Journal

    Drupal [drupal.org] is worth looking at.

    Or, if you need a technical support forum, perhaps it would be better to adapt something like Double-Choco-Latte (DCL) [sourceforge.net] to your needs?
  • Fudforum a feature rich [prohost.org] forum, which does everything you expect of a forum. This includes a decent user/groups/permissions system and file-attachments.
    Fudforum is available under the GPL.
    It's possible to get commercial support from the developers. They'll give you support, or even host it for you.
    Check them out at http://fud.prohost.org/
  • I've used it, not in-depth enough to vouch for all its major features, but always seemed fine for me. YaBB can be found here [yabbforum.com], a Perl (I think!) forum with all your standard stuff, moderation, avatars, smiley faces etc etc. Worth a mention, since I didn't see it so far in the comments.
  • it'll look really ghetto if your main website links to your official forum and that forum is hosted offsite. Especially since the hosting site might decide to throw some popups or banner ads on down the line.
  • Why not use slashcode [slashcode.com]?

    We all know it obviously does discussions, handles user logins, can do SSL too. And user ACL's for permissions if you want it to.
  • strongly suggested that we run one on our own servers, but it seems that this is not an option, so we must look for a 3rd party to supply us with the forum."

    Unless you're some sort of 2-person company that doesn't have your own servers and uses aol dialup for internet access, somebody is being incredibly stupid. I sure wouldn't want important company documents and business plans stored elsewhere.

    • It is an 80 person company that has been around for over 10 years. Their focus was never web, and They are consultants, so once the product is done, there is nothing to host as it is handed off. So why should they have a webserver or a database server? (I already asked them, and they said no...)

      Anyway.. The people running my company are not idiots and are generating a lot of money during crappy economic times. Perhaps the resistance-to-running-ones-own-servers approach has more business merit than eit

  • Infopop OpenTopic (Score:2, Informative)

    by TermAnnex ( 154514 )
    A professional board hosted by the same people who make it.

    http://infopop.com/products/opentopic/

    ArsTechnica uses it for their board: http://infopop.com/products/opentopic/

    I must admit I have used older versions of ubb (made by infopop), and newer version of vBulletin, and liked vbulletin much more, but if you want it hosted, Infopop might be your best bet.
  • The code running a few sites right now is nice for this sorta thing. Tech Revolt [techrevolt.org] and Resurgam [resurgam.org]. Its called Selmer. Its available from Confluent Forms [confluentforms.com].
  • The best I've seen is jive software's [jivesoftware.com] Jive Forums. It used to be open source, but I'm pretty sure that now it's developer's source or something similar. If you pay the license fee you get access to the code. The guys who run this seem really good, both in their responses and usually their response time. They seem to have all the features you need, but might be a little on the expensive side, depending on what you're doing. Just my 2 cents.
  • I learned after a couple weeks with my site (roller-skate.org) that it's best to run your own instead of going with yahoogroups or one of those. When you run your own, you don't have to worry about the provider going out of business, raising rates, or something similar, and you have access to the database that stores all the information (not an option with some of the providers), meaning you could change to a different board and at least have read-only access to the old ones. (I eventually switched my hos

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