Message Board Software
Installing message board software on your website is probably the best way to create a sense of community that is centered on your domain. Message board software also allows you to provide a higher level of support to clients and customers. Answering one question on a message board provides that answer to all of your other customers at any time of the day.
For our site visitors looking for easy-to-use message board software, we recommend vBulletin from Jelsoft Enterprises. vBulletin is probably the most popular message board software currently in use on the Internet today.
Message Board Software From Jelsoft Enterprises
vBulletin is a powerful, scalable and fully customizable forums package for your website. Based on PHP and backed with a fast MySQL back-end database, vBulletin is the ideal community solution for most websites.
vBulletin is very easy-to-use and easy-to-install. This forums package demonstrates the power of using PHP to run your website. Your webpage hosting provider must have PHP 4.0.4 or greater and MySQL 3.23 or greater installed. vBulletin has been successfully installed on several different versions of Unix (including Solaris, and Redhat Linux), as well as Windows NT/2000/XP.
Almost every web hosting provider will have PHP installed, and just about any Unix host will use MySQL. If you are unsure of picking a host that can run vBulletin, all the ones listed in our Cheap Domain Hosting Comparison will meet the requirements.
vBulletin's Message Board Features
- Completely database driven - Everything comes from the database. No more fiddling around with file permissions or worrying about security of the files.
- Scalable solution - Database server and web servers can reside on separate machines. You can even run the database on a Unix machine and the web server of a Windows machine if you want.
- Message Board Templates - Every aspect of the interface can be edited with the comprehensive templates system.
- Importation facility - Makes it easy to seamlessly upgrade from other bulletin board systems, including Infopop's Ultimate Bulletin Board, UBBThreads, OpenTopic, ezboard, and Ikonboard.
- Administrative functionality - Posts can be edited/deleted/moved/locked with one click! Options to moderate new posts before they become publicly viewable and new registrants before they can post.
- Easy to back up - Just download one text file and you have a complete image of your forum.
- Unlimited forums, messages and categories / Searchable database / Private forums / User groups and profiles
- Compliant with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 / Word censor facility
- Ban users based on IP address or email address
- Integrated private messaging for communicating directly with another forum user
- Support for smilies, images, vB Code or HTML in messages (admin configurable)
- Posts since last visit are marked so you can tell at a glance whether there have been new posts in a particular forum
- User email notification of answered posts / Optional email-based registration confirmation
Example Site Using vBulletin
One of our regularly-visited websites is the ihelpyou forums. The Free Search Engine Forums at ihelpyou, Inc., are a rich source of discussion on how to get listed and rank well in various search engines and directories. They use vBulletin to operate forums with over 30 categories with thousands of posts. Visit their site to see vBulletin being put to good use.