As a part of the whole Web 2.0 movement forums have proved invaluable, because they allow lots of users to collectively create and share content. Forums differ from blogs and wiki’s, and this is one of the main differences between all three solutions, is the way the information is displayed and handled. Forums use a post-and-reply method. This means that a registered user creates a topic on a forum and writes some content around that topic and then other registered users can comment on that topic. Only registered users can comment on topics, as opposed to blogs and wiki’s which can allow open access to any user.
I read an article recently that listed 8 Popular Open Source Forums, and from the list so far I tested PHPBB on one site and found it to be easy to install. I did find that the Afrikaans language pack was not updated or even available, which is a little disappointing. I then also tried a plugin for WordPress but found the display a little cluttered, and it just felt a little odd to have a forum inside a blog. Next in line is Vanilla, which amazingly is only 386kb when compared to the 2.16Mb of PHPBB. Vanilla took me 5 minutes to install and it is really a very lightweight forum script. You can go take a look here. I cannot run and test YetAnotherForum at this stage because it uses ASP.NET 2.0, but it really looks a bit like Invision’s forum.
