Best software to use for Forums, such as Amiga.org, any platform.

[InTheSand]

AWeb of course!!! :-)

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

Ah!!! Well... Anything free and MySQL/PHP-based (or free and .NET/MSDE/MSSQL-based) should fit the bill!

 - Ali

EDIT: I've used SMF in the past - very easy to set up and 100% free...

[InTheSand]

Amithony wrote:
...what is SMF?

SMF is the Simple Machines Forum software.

It's pretty much just forums only (though there's a decent number of third-party mods for enhanced functionality) but it does what it says on the tin with a minimal amount of hassle.

I'd certainly have no issues with using this in a work environment. It's easy enough to customise the look-n-feel/themes too.

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

persia wrote:
...if you want a whole content management system Drupal is quite nice...

Ditto for Joomla (which I found easier than Drupal to just get something basic up and running - just my preference though, haven't really looked at the current releases of either for 6-12 months).

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

weirdami wrote:
Are there any sort of security issues with SMF?

Can't say I found any... I've only ever used it on one public-facing site, but access to its forums is by invitation only. This was 2+ years ago and the site is still up and running (and not hacked as far as I'm aware!!)

@Amithony:
Both Joomla and Drupal are open source.

Another good basic combination for a public-facing site (with content modified by a single administrator) is to use CMSimple for the content (e.g. read-only to the public) with SMF providing the forums.

With pretty much any of these, my preferred route is something along these lines: grab old junk hardware with >=512Mb RAM, install Ubuntu, install Apache/MySQL/PHP, install any other pre-requisites, then install the forum/content management software. It really is zero-cost computing!

And... on the subject of useful OSS stuff, if you've got a proprietary and/or unmaintainable training system in your company, Moodle is definitely worth a look...

 - Ali