I've noticed quite a few forums on the web which look and act exactly like PHP Builder (for example cgtalk.com) and I'd like to implement a forum just like this myself. Is there a free downloadable forum script that I can get from somewhere to install a script like this myself?

There are free ones out there you can get, but not the one PHPBuilder uses. It's called VBulletin, and is a little pricey IMHO.

wow thanks for the super-quick reply LordShryku. In a way $160 doesn't seem to be all that bad to me - at least for a business which wants to add a forum to their site, but that's prolly 'cause i haven't gotten my feet too deep into PHP...yet.

Are there any other forum scripts out there that are as good as VBulletin but better on the price side?

and are there any free scripts which are comparable (almost as good) that I can download tomorrow as my forum for my intranet at work, have it up and running, and possibly tweak later on as I get more into PHP?

Tons...
Invision Power Board is spoken of very highly, but phpBB is probably the most popular.

sorry i've got a new series of questions to immediately add to the second set which i just fired off.

when Vbulletin says it's $160 per ownership license for 1+ servers is it ok to make 50 different forums out of the same code as long as it's running on the same server?

Also, more importantly, if I were to get a pre-configured forum script like this one and I want to implement it into a site which has got an entire additional set of information which I want to keep track of per user - and just add it to the info which the forum script is tracking for users - how hard is this to integrate with the code VBulletin (or other pre-fab forum script) sets up for its users?

I hope this run on question is not too hard to understand...

Like for example my intranet at work is going to have users with a whole set of data relevant to our workplace, then I want this to integrate (or be added to or whatever) with the forums user profile data.

One user, a whole lot of tracking data if you get my drift.

thanks, you've been very, very helpful and in a very short time. I've checked out phpBB which seems very cool, and I've also looked at Invision. One of those I will download form work tomorrow and see if I can get it up and running.

How exciting! Cheers...

I use PHPBB. Very easy to implement, any fool can do that, and it's free, something that any dutchman would appreciate I think . And also...it looks better than VB I think, but that's my subjective view offcourse.