The forum script phpBB might be the king of kings when it comes to free forum scripts.  However, the script itself if often susceptible to security problems and hacks due to its success.  So, with that said you might be looking for an alternative to this message board suite.

There is nothing wrong with have a few more scripts to choose from, and there are many great forums scripts in the sea.   Here are some of the best phpBB alternatives out there.

SMF – I had no knowledge of Simple Machine Forum till I had to use it when I used to work at Lunarpages.  Now, I really love it.  It is a free professional grade forum script with all the bells and whistles.

FluxBB – With a proven track resourced when it comes to security and stability, FluxBB is another great script to try. FluxBB was designed as a lighter, faster alternative to some of the traditional feature heavy forum applications.

Vanilla – If you are looking for a forum script that gives you a different appearance than your average message boards can provide, give Vanilla a try.

bbPress – Love WordPress?  Then you might want to try out bbPress.  This is forum software put out by the same people who brought you the blogging script WordPress.  It shares many of the same great features.

UseBB – This next choice is a light and Open Source PHP and MySQL based forum package, distributed freely under the GPL license. Developed with simplicity and usability in mind, UseBB is ideal for small to medium sized websites which need a clear and efficient forum script.

AEF – The full name of AEF is Advanced Electron Forum. This bulletin board software is free software. It is written in PHP and MySQL. AEF has a very simple and easy to use Administration Panel and installing this software is a piece of cake!

PunBB – There is nothing funny about this suggestion.  PunBB is one of the fastest and most lightweight PHP-powered discussion board scripts out there.  It is written to be less graphically intensive too.

IceBB – IceBB is a powerful, fast, free, and open-source forum solution powered by the free PHP and MySQL. IceBB scales well, no matter how many users or posts, due to it’s clean and efficient code.

NinkoBB – Last, but not least this script is an open source forum script written in the PHP language and uses a MySQL Database. Small in size, big in features, and still simple as can be.

BONUS – miniBB – This small, yet powerful forum script is perfect for when and where you need just a simple forum without 1,000 extra bells and whistles your users don’t want or need.  Might be the best simple forum out there.

Now this is no nock to phpBB, which is a perfectly fine forum script for some people out there. It is time though some of the other choice out there got some time in the sun too.  Did I miss your favorite thread starting online tool?  Let me know in the comments.

Over on the Web Hosting Show, I have been talking all week long about our good ‘ol departed friend, Geocities.  After looking back at what went wrong, and what was or was not done, one thing can be said for certain.  The main reason Geocities fell is because they failed to innovate. 

If you too want to follow the rise and fall of this free hosting giant, check out these articles and be sure to download the accompanying podcast too.

A Lesson in Geocities History

You might have heard of Geocities in passing, however if you are new to the Web, or the way things once were – all this concern about a free hosting service might be a little confusing.  So I figured, what better way to pay tribute to the web host that once was, than to give you a history lesson in Geocities.

Saving Geocities for Future Generations

In an effort to save the content that was on Geocities, a group calling themselves the Archive Team is working hard to save the Web that way it once was.  Time to pack away the animated gifs, blinking text, and web rings into their own individual boxes, so that someday we can look back what was once considered, “cool” in web site design.

Alternatives to Geocities Hosting

With the word that Geocities would be closing, “sometime in 2009” many of the Geocities users are looking for other places to host their content.  Even though Geocities is closing the door on it’s free hosting, there are still many free hosting alternatives to Geocities.

Why Did Geocities Fail?

The reasons as to why Yahoo! dropped the ball with Geocities will be a great debate over the next year or so.  However, I feel the main reason Geocities ended up fading off into the sunset is that Yahoo failed to evolve the product into what people needed.

For more web hosting podcasts, interviews, tips and more be sure to check out WebHostingShow.com.  It is tons of fun!

DokuWiki – Aimed at creating documentation of any kind, DokuWiki is a standards compliant wiki with more than a few nice features. It has anti-spam controls, all the basic editing features, supports over 30 languages and has built in page caching for quicker page rendering.  It also features a number of plugins and themes to try too.

BoltWire – A small and easy to use alternative wiki script, Boltwire is still able to deliver with surprising flexibility.  The neat thing here is that it has database-like storage and retrieval of form input values. But no database!  You can also restore a deleted page at any time, and customize ever site action from within the browser.

WikyBlog – So it is a blog and a wiki?  Well I wouldn’t say it is both as much as it tries to fuse the best of both worlds.  WikyBlog brings in the user friendly publishing characteristics of blogs, delivered with the easy to use wiki syntax.  Designed with speed in mind, it is a groupware application that is a nice alternative to the more traditional wiki scripts out there.

WikkaWiki – I promise this wiki script has nothing to do with voodoo or magic.  The WikkaWiki is a script that was forked from WakkaWiki.  With speed, extendibility and security in mind, this wiki script deserves your attention.  They are also working on better ways to integrate WikkaWiki into other content management systems like WordPress, SMF, phpBB and more.

PmWiki – Taking a different approach to content management, Pm wiki looks and acts like a normal web site.  The only difference is that each page inside of the site has an “edit” link to make modification of the page easier.  You can limit the editing to just one person, a team of people or the entire world.  This script would be for people who want a web page, with some wiki-like features.

Which wiki script is your favorite?  Is MediaWiki still the hands down winner to you?  Would love to hear more about your own experiences with any of these top alternatives to MediaWiki.

Want to share your art, your photos or your digital creations via Twitter?  There are a lot of ways to get the task down, however here are the seven best image sharing sites that aim themselves at the tweeter on the street.

• flick.to.twitt – Quick and easy Flickr to Twitter photo sharing. 
• Twitgoo – A Quick and reliable image host aimed at Twitter users.
• Twitpickr – Quickly send your TwitPic images to Flickr.
• twitngo – Quickly produce Twitter status updates with photos or images.
• Twitrpix – Another instant photo sharing via Twitter web application.
• TwitPic – Probably the most popular Twitter related photo sharing web site so far.
• Twitxr – Take a picture and instantly share on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and more.

Know of another you love to use, but didn’t make it on the list?  Leave it in the comments. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I am totally happy with WordPress – but, there are several cool alternatives that might be worth checking out for your next web project.

Drupal – Drupal is a little more of a WordPress on steroids. Lots of goodies and better membership system in place too.

Nucleus CMS – Possibly the best WordPress alternative out there. Gives you all the same features, add-ons, plugins and support.

Textpattern – Flexable and open source blogging solution – much of the same WordPress look and feel.

Serendipity – This is a PHP-powered weblog application which gives the user an easy way to maintain a weblog or even a complete homepage.

Joomla – Like Drupal, might be too feature rich for the casual blogging fan – but a good engine for in depth web sites or basic blogs.

LifeType – A “state of the art blogging solution” is how LifeType describes themselves.

Habari – Looking at more blogging script alternatives, I ran across one that promises to be, “next-generation blogging.”.  I don’t even know what that means, but I do have to admit Habari has a bright future in t-shirt slogans if nothing else.

Wikiblog – This one tries to mix the blogging and wiki sides of things into an interesting mashup of content creation.

eggblog – While a little light on documentation, Eggblog looks to be a nice alternative blogging script for those of you who might not want to follow the fold and use WordPress or one of the other more popular solutions out there.

There you have it – nine other tools you can use to get your content published and your articles out there to the world. Have one I missed?

Meet the contenders…

Foxmarks – There is no tool out there that does everything GBS does, but the main thing I need is bookmark syncing. Foxmarks did do the work – only problem was it was confusing to setup. I wasn’t sure if I was uploading or downloading, syncing or unsyncing. I’m sure if I spent time with it – it might have made sense, but if I can’t figure it out in five minutes – I’m probably not going to use it.

Online Bookmark Manager – This is another Firefox extension solution with a free hosted space. I would say if folks like the idea behind Foxmarks but want a different route to go, OBM is worth a shot. Still didn’t do what I needed it to do though.

Bookmarks Synchronizer – This is a Firefox extension that let you connect to an FTP/WebDAV server and synchronize your bookmarks that are stored in an XML file. Nice, but still did not cut the cake for me. This is yet another solution like Foxmarks and OBM – but no free hosting for the backups.

If not these, who did you go with for bookmark syncing?

All of these were good solutions, but I decided to give the del.icio.us Bookmarks extension a shot. I moved all my PC bookmarks over to del.icio.us and I have to say I like it thus far.

All the “secret” bookmarks I have set to hide from the public – and it was easy enough to setup on both my desktop PC and my notebook computer. This extension totally replaces your standard bookmarking and replaces it with del.icio.us.

The whole thing is very fast as well – they much cache some of the results, because I can hardly even notice this is “integrated with the Web” at all.

As far as set up and the first configurations go, that all went fast and smooth. No complaints there. Now in the department of customization?

I would rather poke myself in the eyes with sharp sticks than try to tackle that again.

I might give them a shot once they have advanced the style customizations (like the search results Web pages), but right now I would say stay far away unless you want to waste a few hours trying to figure out how to hack around with overlaying your CSS and code on top of the basic Web page results they give you.