Daryl J Hudson III - Discussion Board for Website!

[DarylJHudsonIII]

Hi,

My name is Daryl J Hudson III, I have a clothing website and I want to add a Discussion Board in my website for the customer queries. Please suggest me as soon as possible what should I do for that. I am waiting for your valuable responses...


Thanks
Daryl J Hudson III

[bernie1227]

What do you mean by discussion board? Do you mean as in a forum?

[djr33]

There are lots of options (some free and some paid) that you can easily find with a search.

Personally I like SMF (which is free). PhpBB is another popular one.

You'll need to check what serverside language(s) your host/server supports (PHP is the most common!) and whether you can have a database. Almost all of the popular/best boards use a database as well, usually MySQL. Check if you have that. If you don't have a database available, it's possible to use text files ("flat files") to store the information instead, but it might run slower and it's usually more difficult to program, so features might be limited-- there are still some options out there for you, but just a little more limited.

If you want to look at all of your options in-depth, this site should help:
http://www.forummatrix.org/

[bernie1227]

My two favorites are probably phpBB and vbullitin, which I believe this forum runs on.

[djr33]

Yes, this forum is vBulletin (just upgraded to the newest version), but note that vBulletin is fairly expensive. Otherwise, it works well. (PhpBB is free.)

In the end, a lot of the top systems are very similar, actually.

[DarylJHudsonIII]

Thanks to all for giving me suggestions. Please do me a favor to choose which one is a better option vBulletin or PhpBB??

Daryl J Hudson III

[djr33]

Do you want to pay for vBulletin? If not, use PhpBB, which is free. As for which is truly "best" (regardless of cost), I think it's just about personal taste-- they have almost identical features, although they may be organized slightly differently.
The advantage of vB is that it will give you tech support, I think-- confirm that, unlike phpBB, although you can ask at their forum for help. phpBB will have more templates because it's used by more people, but hackers/spammers will also be better at attacking/spamming phpBB because it's more widely used.