Setting up a forum for work.

My new boss is the type of boss that, if you highlight a problem or idea to him, it automatically becomes your job to sort it out or implement it. I have no problem with that, I suppose that’s how a good Boss acts. Better than simply refusing the idea outright.

So one of my new jobs is to set up a forum. Well to be more truthful it’s either me or the main IT guy who generally does stuff like that.

Since the IT guy is busy as hell I’ll take the initiative. And if it’s within my skills I’ll implement the thing myself.

I will probably do some rooting around on the web but it’s always wise to ask experienced human people who’ve done it themselves. So that’s what I’m doing here.

I am wanting to set up a forum, with subforms, accessable inside one building (or as a bonus - from the internet, with a password) which will preferably be free. but if there is nothing for free in the forum world then paying money is feasable.

Wouldn’t vBulletin work? You’re already familiar with it…

It’s $85/year license or $160 to outright purchase it.

Damn boards ate my first response. Too lazy to retype the whole thing.

If you want cheap, phpbb is free and almost as good as vbulletin. Just set up an apache or iis server on one of the boxes on the company’s lan, install php and mysql (most linux distros even do that automatically) and have at it. Internal access is just a matter of typing the local IP (an actual www.foo.whatever address requires a bit of trickery). External access is something you’ll want to have a chat about with the firewall admin. Anyway, easy peasy.