[jvsmith]

The next step for me is to add a classroom (forum) to the University so that the learning can be more interactive...any suggestions on this? Anybody else delve into the world of adding a forum to their site? What's the best forum software? etc...

[Patrician]

I would look into Joomla on that - while it is nowhere near as easy as people say, it still is easier than progamming and their 'theme' or formats are really clean and nice.

[Audrey Harvey]

I build my forums with Simple Machines Forum, it's free, and easy to customize, you can even add advertisements if you want to monetize it.

[Aperio]

I would also recommend checking out MyBB - Free and Open Source Forum Software as well. It's not perfect, but for free it's pretty darn good. I tried quite a few before settling on that one for a small project of mine.

[Bluewater]

I dont take any forums seriously unless they run on vbulletin with vbseo. Take a look at the major forums you'll find they all use that combination.

[Aperio]

Originally Posted by Bluewater

I dont take any forums seriously unless they run on vbulletin with vbseo. Take a look at the major forums you'll find they all use that combination.

A year ago I would have agreed with that statement without hesitation... but since vbulletin was sold, it's just never been the same.. plus their pricing structure is just horrid now. Please pardon the rantings of a woman scorned...

[jvsmith]

Thanks all...Word Press has a bb program too. I didn't realize that there would be so many choices. I'll just have to take my time to evaluate them all and make a smart decision. What do you suppose this forum uses?

[tryinhere]

Originally Posted by Bluewater

I dont take any forums seriously unless they run on vbulletin with vbseo. Take a look at the major forums you'll find they all use that combination.

Embeddable Forums by Tal.ki

this is another option that may help but i also seem to think along the lines of bluewater in many ways / having trouble with the same questions

[jvsmith]

So, what's the advantage of vbulletin with vbseo over others? Why would a future student take that type of forum more 'seriously' than others?

[Bluewater]

Originally Posted by jvsmith

So, what's the advantage of vbulletin with vbseo over others? Why would a future student take that type of forum more 'seriously' than others?

I have to say I'm not that familiar with PIPS, although I do know a little about it. If your main forum user base is people brand new to the business then it probably doesnt matter too much which forum platform you provide. All will be equally as confusing

Vbulletin with vbseo is pretty much the industry standard that all the big forums use - Warrior Forum, Digital Point, Site Point, Wicked Fire etc. It does cost money and to me that says 'this site is really serious about their forum' rather than using some free option which kind of says 'I want a forum but I'm looking to save a couple a hundred dollars here by going with a free, but inferior system'.

If the forum content is only accessible via a login then vbseo is pointless, since vbseo ensures se friendly urls and is primarily geared for achieving rankings and pulling in long tail keyword traffic.

I would still say though that vbulletin should be your forum platform of choice since members will be most familiar with the functionality if they are already active on forums such as here.

As mentioned I'm not speaking from a what is best for Pips point of view, rather someone who runs a large forum and used phpbb for years. I switched to VBulletin and wish I'd done it years ago.

[Bluewater]

Originally Posted by jvsmith

What do you suppose this forum uses?

This forum uses Vbulletin with vbseo, and has paid for footer link removal.

[newbie2011]

Just ask your university site's webmaster to put the link of forum in the home page.

[jvsmith]

I am the university site's webmaster...lol! :rolleyes:

Originally Posted by newbie2011

Just ask your university site's webmaster to put the link of forum in the home page.

[Sam1985]

Adding discussion forums to your website requires more than just nicely designed pages. You need programs on the web server to accept forum postings, fetch existing forum postings from a database, and so on. Fortunately there is excellent free forum software available written in PHP.

phpBB is a powerful forum system that provides individual user accounts, forum postings with support for more than just plain text, message threads and a great deal more. And it's free and completely open source.


If you host your website on Microsoft OS then you may wish to check out communityserver, a free ASP.NET website forum software package.

[Tady_Bear]

i recommend you SMF, lot of support, ton of plugins.