Hi Guys
I have resgistered a domain and I want to create a website that is first an foremost a forum. I will see how many users I can get registered and then think about what products I could sell later on. The topic happens to be something I know very well, and I am sure I can create LOTS of content and attract visitors and registered users.

Is Joomla the best thing to use to create a website that is mostly going to be a forum?

Thanks for ANY reply at all !

There are many great and free scripts to run forums. The only problem is that the good scripts are popular and therefore many spamming tools are optimized for these.

I have pulled all my public forums down because we couldn't handle the huge mass of spam posts. I've always used the PHP BB script http://www.phpbb.com/ But I guess that all popular scripts get spammed.

If you find one that not gets spammed, let me know... I want it

Guido

Thanks for the reply Geedo.

Do you mean they get spammed, even if the forum requires a member to sign up? Are there spam tools that can sign up and then start posting to the forum?

Yeah, they even get through the Captcha (that little code that you need to enter to confirm you are a human).

Guido

Great question! Well, as you can see here I am using a Joomla (with the Joomla Fireboard Component to run the forum). I wouldn't recommend it though. As you can see, the forum looks nice and is functioning just fine. So it's impt that it is stable software and is running alright. The downside to the forum is that it is not SEO friendly at all. The links are long and akward, and all of the SEO components (that can be used for free and downloaded online) have so many problems, they slow down the site and in the end cause big headaches. So after many issues, I gave up on that and put it back to the default long URLS. SEO is a big deal to me but the forum staying online is more important. So....I haven't used an alternate script for a while (like phpbb) but if you want something more on the social network/forum type of side, definitely go for: Dolphin software. It is opensource (free) and has beautiful features. I installed it before and was completely impressed by the massive amount of features and income potential. It has a built in affiliate/referral program. You can use it or leave the site as it is (free to join). Here is a link: http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/

You can also checkout (and tryout the demos) for different forum softwares here: http://www.opensourcecms.com/ (all free)

Thanks Holly ! Wow , a reply from the Goddess herself !

I will try the Dolphin software.

Yes, as a user on this site, I dont like Fireboard much, so far. Some pages load halfway and then reload completely. Very often, I cant use the back button in the browser.