Forum Hosting?

[The Monkey]

I'm looking into setting up a forum for my apartment building. I want something easy to set up, maintain, and administer. Basically, I want a service to do the work for me. And I want it cheap. Grawk suggested freeforums.org, which looks good, but I seek some additional recommendations if you've got 'em. I guess I'd also be willing to pay a small (read very small) fee.

[The Monkey]

And now I'm thinking about vbulletin, which I know means some bucks. Are there good vbulletin-specific hosting services?

[Hopstretch]

How big is the building and how much is the BB really likely to get used? We've just used Google Groups for our small neighborhood association.

[deepak]

phpBB is another free alternative: phpBB • Creating Communities Worldwide

Has good support as well.

[The Monkey]

Thanks guys, both good ideas. I've considered both, but I like the features of vbulletin. phbb still is an option, but I have issues with the interface. I just like vbulletin more. Seems much more robust. Like me.

[grawk]

SMF (the software this place ran until todd switched) is good, easy to run, and free as well...

I know dreamhost is reasonably cheap, and comes with phpbb as a free option. You'd have to do more work to install smf or vbulletin there.

[blessingx]

Like Hopstretch, I wonder if a list-serve or Yahoo or Google Groups might better work out for a case like this?

[JBLoudG20]

Assuming your apartment building won't bring in 50bajillion hits a day, you can piggyback the server I have from 1&1 if want.

[crappyjones123]

+1 for phpbb. thats what i used for back when i ran the website for my source team. very nice and simple to install.