Okay for the project I'm working on at the moment... I have nearly everything up but I want to have a forums on the site. The forums will be used mainly as a "contact us/help" type of thing, but it will also have discussion forums on it also.

I know forums out there like SMF, phpBB, ect but those are all too complicated for what I'm wanting. I want the forums to follow the exact same layout as my site so I figured it would have to be done in php code.

So I have a few questions:

1) What is the most simple but also the most customizable forums available for free download?
2) Or should I just create my own?

3) Should I have the forums have a seperate sign up than the main site?
The reason I ask is because in order to sign up for the services that my site will provide, the user will need to have a website of their own. This could cause problems for those people who may just be wanting a spot on the forums.

So this leads me back to the forums types. If I used SMF, phpBB, I imagine I'd be able to customize the layout to fit that of my site (for the most part at least?)

Well you could wait for mine if you want

[OpenSourlceCMS] can give you online demos of what each CMS (including a ot of the forum systems out there) are like.

Jacob.

im using that simple one you have on creactive online and creating a super simple forum system with pm integration/user integration. (enhancing it a little) That wont be out for a bit though...

Thanks alot Narzy.
And wozzym.



I am going to look over those and then decide if I'm going to use the super-simple forum that I was using on thinkcreactive.com and then do what wozzym is doing: Just add PM, ect. Doing it that way will be more work for setting the entire thing up, but it will also allow me to design the way it looks entirely on my own. Probably won't be any images or anything.

But all in all my project is nearly complete. Just got to add the members overview page, add a couple of the basic features, add a settings page and then it will be open for beta testing for the most part.

For a hint at what it is:

A 100% free traffic-generating website. It's similar to a banner exchange but not quite - no user is required to put any ads on their site to get their ad shown.

And from what I can tell it's the first site of it's type (though there are some sites that are kind of similar but none of them are free from what I can tell)

You can use SMF and mod it to fit your site syle etc...

No problems. PM me if you need help skinning your new system.

Jacob.

Thanks to Narzy I think the one I'm going to use is "Phorum.org" - It is super simple (which I like) and it seems to be the easiest to customize due to the low # of images, ect.

Great idea. From that, you should build your own CMS. That's all that I do.

Jacob.

I'm using PunBB, and I am making a mod of it... soon to be available at http://1337bb.99k.org

And btw PunBB is open source so it is legal to modify/redistribute/etc

You can see mine in a live demo HERE

Thanks for the advice guys

I've decided, though, (finally) to just make my own simple type of forums because through all of the work to get any actual forum script to look good on my site I could have just made my own to begin with

Unless there is a forum script out there which allows you to just use an "include" and it will automatically be inserted into a certain part of your site..

WHOO!

I -finally- found one. I originally went to this forums because it just looked and felt awesome when I was playing around with the demo and then I downloaded and installed it...

LO AND BEHOLD - It was easy as HELL to configure to make it look and feel like I never left my site! It's pretty damn cool if you ask me.

It's got the look & feel of a very nice email client, though it's a forums and it's super simple to customize to what you want it to look like.

http://www.fuzzylime.co.uk is their website.

Now I just got to add my same menu in there and it should all be gravy

Good to know you found something that you liked. Keep us posted on your developments.

Jacob.

i would of sugested PHPBB3, ok i admit very complicated but DAMN ! it is very powerfull.

and implementing your template is actualy simple just need to knwo the HTML basis overal_header and footer to be modifed. and put your CSS in the theme folder. really easy. but oh well