Recommend a forum engine, please

[wisekat]

Our site is hosted on DASP's servers, and now we need to establish a forum for our users. Can anyone recommend a good forum engine we can use for that?

We are highly interested to know if somebody already established forums on DASP's servers. How do they work? Does the performance of the main site become worse after installing a forum in the same domain? And what problems you also experienced at all?

As for our personal plans, we are going to use YetAnotherForum.NET for this purpose. Can you tell us something about it?

[wisemx]

...The PHP forums are available in your sites CP, but if you're like me and want to be an ASP.NET purist I'd have to agree with YAF, my bro Dave Burke loves it:
http://sueetie.com/wiki/GetSueetie.ashx

[Ramses]

Yes, YAF is actually pretty good, but if you want it to be PHP, I believe you can use just about any out there at the moment.

[mjp]

Does the performance of the main site become worse after installing a forum in the same domain?That shouldn't be an issue. An additional application will use resources in your application pool that otherwise would have been free, but I think all of the modern forums are pretty efficient. I haven't heard anyone suggest that YAF is a resource hog in any way.

[Ramses]

I haven't heard anyone suggest that YAF is a resource hog in any way.

Exactly this. It's very rare when a forum software is causing problems, so you'd be good to go on pretty much any forum out there. I think aside of the Telerik Community Server which might use more resources (but it's because it offers so much) you should be good to use any other forum software out there without problems.

[wisekat]

...The PHP forums are available in your sites CPWhat does it mean? Do you want to say that we can activate a PHP-forum module to use it on our website? And as I know, we also need to purchase at least a SQL add-on to make it possible to use a forum engine. Or are we missing something?

but if you're like me and want to be an ASP.NET purist I'd have to agree with YAFAs I understand the difference between .NET and PHP, ASP.NET is much better because its code is compiled into native CPU instructions instead of interpreting PHP, right :)?

So in the general case an ASP.NET forum should work faster and better than any PHP solution. That's why we started to use mainly ASP.NET for our website.

[wisekat]

After re-reading the DASP base hosting plan carefully, we see that the phpBB and YAF hosting is available. But what does it mean? Is it a just compatibility list and we should do all things by our hands to make this stuff working, or it is a ready-to-use module we can activate?

And we found one interesting page, http://www.discountasp.net/sp_yetanotherforum-hosting.aspx, that contains a link to order YAF hosting. Why should we buy it? As we understand, YAF is a free-redistributable app we can already install on our website. What's the difference?

And if somebody can tell us what database add-on we should buy for YAF (and what is the price), that would be nice.

Thank you guys for all your answers and suggestions!

An additional application will use resources in your application pool that otherwise would have been freeSorry for this question (we are enough new to this issue), but do you mean we will need to set the forum's directory as a new IIS application thru Control Panel? And this will guarantee that the performance of the main site will remain the same as its "app" will be separated from the forum's app?

Thnx all in advance for your helpful answers!!

[Ramses]

What does it mean? Do you want to say that we can activate a PHP-forum module to use it on our website? And as I know, we also need to purchase at least a SQL add-on to make it possible to use a forum engine. Or are we missing something?

This really depends on the requirements of the forum software. If you choose YAF, you will need at least a SQL server database to use it. If you choose a PHP forum, chances are you will need a MySQL database. PHPBB (PHP forum) currently is able to use both, but I think YAF is better at the moment, though PHPBB has a lot of mods too. It really depends on what you think is better suited for your use.

After re-reading the DASP base hosting plan carefully, we see that the phpBB and YAF hosting is available. But what does it mean? Is it a just compatibility list and we should do all things by our hands to make this stuff working, or it is a ready-to-use module we can activate?

It means that you're able to use it on our hosting environment. YAF you'd have to download from the YAF site and upload to our hosting environment, where PHPBB can be set up through the Web Application Gallery [https://my.discountasp.net/webapplication-gallery.aspx], which will put the files in your hosting account, and you'll then be able to run the installer.

And we found one interesting page, http://www.discountasp.net/sp_yetanotherforum-hosting.aspx, that contains a link to order YAF hosting. Why should we buy it? As we understand, YAF is a free-redistributable app we can already install on our website. What's the difference?

You do not need that if you already have a hosting account. That link just sends you to create a new hosting account, in case you didn't have one already.

And if somebody can tell us what database add-on we should buy for YAF (and what is the price), that would be nice.

YAF should be able to use any of the SQL addons, which you can get in the SQL Manager [https://my.discountasp.net/mssql.aspx] page. It'll list all the information on this page.

Sorry for this question (we are enough new to this issue), but do you mean we will need to set the forum's directory as a new IIS application thru Control Panel? And this will guarantee that the performance of the main site will remain the same as its "app" will be separated from the forum's app?

Thnx all in advance for your helpful answers!!

Setting it up as a new application is a setting that basically will make sure this application is separate from the roots application. This way the YAF application (installed in subfolder) should not inherit settings from the roots web.config