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On this episode we ask, what do you want out of a forum? We discuss the work involved in building a community, I recommend the book Managing Online Forums, (As well as the website Managing Communities) and we take a look at various forum software.
For forum services I’d take a look at Vanilla Forums. Vanilla also comes in a self-hosted version you can install on your own site.
Other self-hosted options include PHPBB, VBulletin, and MyBB.
If you’re looking for WordPress integration, Automattic have their own solution in BBPress. There’s also Simple:Press, Mingle Forum, Forums Plugin, Tal.ki Embeddable Forums, and Forum Press. Not to mention the interesting idea of Tweetboard which turns twitter into a forum.