What is phpBB?

phpBB is a high powered, fully scalable, and highly customizable Open Source bulletin board package. phpBB has a user-friendly interface, simple and straightforward administration panel, and helpful FAQ.

Based on the powerful PHP server language and your choice of MySQL, MS-SQL, PostgreSQL or Access/ODBC database servers, phpBB is the ideal free community solution for all web sites.

phpBB is included with every account!

phpBB version 2 focuses on a professional-quality modular design, high security, multiple-language interface, support for a multitude of databases servers and complete layout customization, all with a low execution overhead.

In addition, phpBB is open-source software so it has no fees, no subscriptions, and no restrictions on modifications. Couple this with a thriving and friendly phpBB community and you have a killer solution for creating communities on your site!

Features

1-click install through your control panel
Unlimited Forums & Categories
Unlimited forums can be organized into unlimited categories
Private forums and those only for specified user groups
Powerful search facility

Posting Messages

Message formatting with various font styles and sizes as well as allowing quoting, code display, image posting and automatic URL linking
Support of standard and extended BBCode tags and controlled HTML tags
Polls can be simply added to posts
Email notification of replies to your topics
Powerful topic subscription capability
Original emoticons to portray emotions

Easy to Use Administration Centre

General configuration
Forum & category setup
Easy database backup and restore
Disallowed usernames
User authorisation
Word censoring
Complete member management
Emoticon setup
Optional new post verification
Extensive ban management, ban by email address, username or single/multiple IP address or hostname
IP tracking of posts and posters
Mass emailing of groups and users by the administrator

Styles

Multiple styles available for the user to choose from
Templates separated from the PHP code so that new layouts can easily be created or integrated with your current site design
Complete control of fonts and colours with cascading style sheets (CSS)
Active community creating addons and specialised modifications
Default style compliant with XHTML 1.0 and HTML 4.01 recommendations from the W3C

For more information please visit www.phpbb.org where you will find templates, modifications, language files and support.

It is truly one of the best forum applications available for free.