What is the best and most customizable php forum software that you know?

[Guest upirate]

It needs to not have a big footprint (search related issues)

 

It also needs to be customizable fully and easily.

 

It can be a commercial or opensource

 

Thank You

[dustinnoe]

http://www.getvanilla.com

 

[TRI0N]

One that I like the best that is free for no profit use as long at you don't change memebers to use the forums is phpBB v2 and version 3 is just around the corner.  http://www.phpbb.com. It's what I use for clients that want forums.

[liam1412]

Vbullettin is a good one. Think it cost about 80 quid tho.  The search results it brings back in google are amazin.  Type my sheffield forum user name in speech marks in to google "liam1412". It picks up nearly every post I have ever made on there

[Jessica]

Isn't that the opposite of what he wants? He said not a big footprint

[liam1412]

Isn't that the opposite of what he wants? He said not a big footprint

 

Oops I miss read the post.  Soooreeee

[Guest upirate]

Sorry I should have clarified.

 

When I said small footprint i meant memory efficient.

 

Being searchable in google is a definite positive.

 

Does Vanilla have good SEO ?

 

thanks

 

[JBS103]

PHPBB will get some pretty good results, almost too much because you will start to get spam bots if you don't take proper precautions.

[Guest upirate]

I am open to commercial solutions also.

 

 

I want:

1). small memory footprint.

2). efficient searches

3). SEO Friendly

4). Highly customizable.

 

 

is there such a thing ? lol

[dustinnoe]

Vanilla starts you off with the bare bones.  They designed it to stay that way.  There are tons of extensions out there to do the extras you may want.  It also has a few nifty AJAX functions.  It is also very SEO friendly considering the mark-up is super semantic.  Looks wonderful with CSS turned off.

 

http://www.getvanilla.com

[Guest upirate]

Ill check it out

[TRI0N]

The new verson of phpBB is very interesting. I'm running a beta version of it now and is expected to be released soon.

 

You have full access to Search Bot Configurations, Allow/Deny whichever ones you want to.

 

Signatures can be even flash...  Uses ImageMagik to auto resize Avatars that are uplaoded.

 

Security has been majorly overhauled.  Though these guys are on top of any holes right away when they are reported.

 

Very customizable..

 

Send me a PM and I'll set you up to look at some features.

[Guest upirate]

Someone told me that vBulletin was the most SEO friendly search engine out there, is that true in any one of you alls experinece ?

 

 

 

[redarrow]

seoing the forum is a seo job any site can be seo to the top of webpages it's the no how ok.

 

it dosent matter what forum you get the seo of that forum is the work of the seo exspert ok.

 

you can have baddly writen forum code but hit the top off the search engines ok.

[TRI0N]

A common rule of thumb is simple about SEO.  Not all Search Bots/Spiders will index your whole forums.  Some will only read X number of meta tags, some will only ready 5 or such expanded topics before the bot/spider moves on to the next topic.  Thats why it crutial that the users that make posts with descriptive titles and the Topic Descritpions are detailed to get indexed well.

 

The other main thing is that most bots/spiders will not visit your site for a month or more at a time unless you pay them otherwise to get more exposure and updates.

 

Like redarrow says its the SEO's job to expose your site and figure out the best way to do so.

 

But if your in charge of this aswell then you will need to know those basics.  Your best bet if you plan to spend money for exposure is Google being the best.  Then Yahoo and microsofts new search second.  Chanes are that if you put money toward exposure toward Google you will be exposed to almost any Search Engine out there.

[mbtaylor]

I feel that Simple Machines Forum should be mentioned (what this forum is running). I have no idea about its memory usage, but its a most excellent forum (for a developers and users point of view). I use it on a few of my sites and theres a nice API to allow you to plug into your frameworks auth functionality.

 

There is another forum called Phorum, that is quite light weight and has a good level of functionality.

[jini01]

very interesting....

 

 

 

ok lets move on to customizable forums. any ideas or suggestions.

 

My biggest concern with phpbb and a few others is that they attract a lot of script kiddies (hacking etc) 

 

What forum would you chose in terms of having 80-100 k members that allows people to search efficiently so maybe it has an excellent  efficient indexer.

 

 

 

 

Thankyou