Wayback Machine doesn't spider whole sites (specially for big ones) and they spider only once in a while.
Anyway, another question:
Which board is the easiest to integrate so that a single login will work on the whole website and easy to have a userlevels or permissions based system.
in vB, setting the array containing your user info:
chdir("{$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']}/boarddir");
require_once("./global.php");
Then you have to hack one line in vB to point you back to REFERER and have a form there that points to vB's member.php IIRC.
If you decide to go with vB, I'll hook you up with the code and a sample page. www.vbulletin.org has a bunch of info on this as well.
I can't compare the others, sorry, but maybe this helps if someone else knows them.
I think vBulletin is one of the best... it has a very nice layout and the admin part is easy to handle. phpBB instead has some good features too, but i stick w/ vB 
People like phpbb2? That was the one I hate the most, right next to phorum!
Anyhow, OpenBB works well and It even has a COUPLE of free portals... corephp.bolado.org
Isn't openBB the old blazeboard? I hacked that once to use Postgres, then they disappeared like 6 months later and had a redirect to openBB, IIRC.
Yes, as is XMB and many other bulletin boards.
has anyone tried the newer ikonboard forums?
Nope, but I was advised not to.
why not?
I'm considering between phpbb, invisionboard and ikonboard, since I dont want to code the forum in myself.
I seem to find phpbb having some quirks in some areas, probably bugs or my poor configuration, other than that I like it.
I havent really tried invisionboard as an admin as the first time I tried it was with an older version that seemed to have problems with moderation and administration.
I've only tried the 2.x versions of Ikonboard, but that was like years ago.
1 factor for me not to choose ikonboard would be that I'm not much of a Perl programmer, but on the other hand I dont plan to modify my forums in the first place.
So the other problem might be the difference between CGI taking up too much resources, but then it's not like my forum has a particularly large target group.
I like phpBB en InvisionBoard the most. They both have a nice lay-out. IB's adminpanel looks better then the adminpanel of phpBB. But phpBB's source looks better then IB's.
I don't like Ikonboard, because I don't like it's lay-out en it doesn't always work good..
Install phpBB and InvisionBoard and try the boards yourself.
I wrote my own forums, because I wanted to. Also, I run a competition on my site, which requires usernames and passwords, so they both run off the same authentication engine.
It took time, but as an intellectual exercise it was interesting. I've just gone through a 'lessons learned' session with myself, and v2 is in development.
If I were going to use an off-the-shelf product, I would choose vBulletin. I'm a SuperMod at one vB site (11,000 members, 580,000 posts) and Mod at another (500 members, 10,000 posts), and both webmasters have nothing but praise for it.
The IBM too
has made a tool, "quickplace", that make the forum.
It use two server with at least 512mb of ram, but it's very usefull: it's enbedded with lotus family and work with LDAP authentication. Ah, forgive, the server it's linux too, but the client work only from m$ IE...
i'll make my own...
phpbb - this is very easy to integrate into full site operations and use the content generated from the board all over the place.
PLUS IT's FREE
Vbulletin! But if I had to get a free one then phpBB
And for the people that haven't tried the vB admin section here: http://www.vbulletin.com/admindemo.html
I just downloaded phpBB and Invision Board, and have been trying them both out. They both installed extremely easy on my Mac and were up and running in literally 5 minutes. (8min if you consider the time it took to set up a virtualhost). Here are a few reasons why I'm leaning towards Invision:
1) The admin panel is much more comprehensive than phpBB.
2) The templates are easier to edit. (directly in the admin panel)
3) Calendar of events
4) Support for "Fast Reply"
5) The layout of the navigational aides is nicer in Invision than in phpBB. IMHO
6) Invision offers cheap web hosting for your forum, or for your entire site. Fairly comprehensive package (at a glance anyway)
I haven't tried customizing any of the Invision scripts yet, but one of the things I liked about phpBB, was the ease of changing the "jump menu" (for example). Not to mention that phpBB is open source... which is always something I ike to support.
Anyway, that's my 2¢. I'd be interested in hearing other stories in favor of phpBB. I've seen a few nicely customized phpBB forums (BuzzLY's comes to mind) and I'd like to know why others might pick phpBB over Invision Boards. (I'm leaving vBulletin out of this because of the cost issue, and I haven't tried other boards yet)
wow, someone is out to dig up the old, dead threads
How do we know if it's dead?
I heard it say (in a thick british accent):
I not dead yet!... Actually I feel quite fine.
It went on and mumbled something about a "mere flesh wound"...
Anyway. The threads on any forum act as an archive, available to anyone whenever they need the info. Since I was just getting into bulletin board software, I read a few threads and decided to vote here and add my two cents.
You might fit in here, after all 
"Your wife, uh, does she, y'know..."
Why, it was only moribund for a month ... Less.
Which would you rather have: one definitive thread on the subject that has all the relevant discussion in it. Or hundreds of little threads that start up everytime someone asks the same question that was asked hundreds of times before, and all redundantly containing the same things as each other?
But that's a topic for another thread
