Hello Nick,

I recently started hosting a wood surfboard forum on my site. www.schweizersurf.com/forum I love the look and I love that you have different main topics and from there you have subtopics. What I use is PHPBB, and although it is a bit difficult to figure out at first, it really gives you a lot of options. I'm not a programmer, but I do have a nack for figuring things out. You are correct that if someone goes off-topic it won't show up as a new topic. It does quickly allow you to look at the subjects you're most interested in, and under the subject heading you get a list of topics, so it's easier to get an overview. Also you can post multiple pictures. I have an unlimited bandwidth on my site, so I don't care how many pics people post. If you're paying for bandwidth you can limit the number of pics in the settings. Also people can have avatars and they can post attachments such as a PDF of a design they created.

HOWEVER- one warning: because it is one of the more popular formats, it also appears to be more popular with spammers. I upgraded my captcha settings and got rid of a lot of the spam, but I still get about one per day getting an ID. I have yet to have one of these able to post spam, but they were able to get id's. I delete them as they show up. Usually the screen name makes no sense- just letters and numbers generated by bots. Also I check the i.p. address and most of the time it's from Russia or China. I ban them by i.p. address and delete them. There are ways to set it so that new members are limited to what they can post. This has kept the spammers from being able to post before I delete them. Captcha is a must with PHPBB.

The site allows you to set up moderators that you can delegate authority to in order to monitor spam and unwarranted posts. My site is so small I don't yet have the need for moderators, but the option is there. There are skins you can download for free, but you might be limited to what they have as the images and headings. The one I used unfortunately was titled "dirty board" because it has an old parchment look to it. The name sounded like it was a porn site or something, and the name was emblazoned in the heading. I covered that up with my own logo by replacing it in the FTP server with my own image, but recently I learned that if you use an old browser it doesn't display my logo and it still displays "dirty board." Probably if I were a programmer and knew HTML I could take that out, but for now I don't want to do too much "messin' with it." What I like about this particular skin is that the box beside a post turns red when there's a new post, and black when there's not. Also the site allows you to view only new posts, or to view only your own posts. There are hundreds of free skins on the net.

Anyway, just answering your request for information, but I'm happy to have the kayak forum no matter what format you choose. As always I am grateful for it and of all the forums on the net truly this one has the best group of folks. In many years I think I've only seen one "rant" which was quickly extinguished by the professionalism of the members of the board. I think when you combine woodworking and kayaking you get a really cool group of folks.

Cheers,

Malcolm