Need advice: starting a forum!

[lugaru]

Well I have this culture website (restaurants, beer, cinema, movies, the works) and my friends have decided they want a forum. I've done the forum thing in the past with mixed results but at this point Im looking to see if you guy's have any advice who to go with. Im looking for no adds (which I might have to pay for, but free is better), low maintenance and decent control as far as looks and admin stuff goes. Any advice or recomendations?

PS being hard to hack is another pro...      ;)

[Uncle Yuan]

PS being hard to hack is another pro...      ;)

Aw come on, what are the chances that a forum would ever get hacked?

[UnfluffyBunny]

http://www.simplemachines.org
SMF forum like we have here, free software, very easy to mod, if you're worried about security, and you dont mind dabbling in a little php then:
http://www.tinyportal.net
Tinyportal has alot of security mods that add onto the security of SMF, also you can create a sidebar for things like external links, or shoutboxes right from your forum.

[lugaru]

I spent a chunk of this morning looking at that solution and it looks like I would have to learn a little coding to use it but man, that would provide some pretty flexible options. I'll give it a good proper shot and if it's over my head (Im just terrible with code) I'll move on to something more simplified. Still thanks a million Syn!

[UnfluffyBunny]

if you have any code issues and it's within my knowledge send me a pm and i'll try to help

[randyripoff]

The quickest and easiest to setup (IMO) is phpBB2.  The problem there is making modifications is painful, and if your forum traffic takes off, it's really not built for larger sites.

SMF is highly flexible and has a really good package manger, but the learning curve is steeper.

vBulletin isn't bad, but I don't have a great deal of experience with the software.