Web forums, also known as Message Boards, provide a space on the web where forum members can post questions and comments regarding a particular subject.  Other forum members can then view and post replies to posted questions and comments, or can start a thread of their own subject.  Click here to view a sample web forum.

Webmasters that want to provide their users with simple web forums requiring no authentication will find the very affordable Express edition sufficient.

The Professional edition provides webmasters with more customization options, as well as user authentication.

The Professional for Integrated Collaboration edition, which is the edition that ships with the bf.collaboration suite, includes all the features of Professional plus document attachments and the full set of JScript/ASP source code.

View feature lists for all bf.forums editions.

Yes.  Depending on the edition, the means provided to administer the forums varies.  The Express edition's object exposes methods to perform administrative tasks (create new forums, modify/delete forums, modify/delete posted messages, etc.), and ships with a reference implementation that includes web based administration.

The Professional editions both include full implementations of an administrator console that provides web based access to all administrative functions including the creation/modification/deletion of forums and messages, as well as the administration of user privileges to each forum.

Like all of the components of bf.collaboration, bf.forums can use ODBC to connect to its datasource.  In that light, bf.forums will work with any database that has an ODBC compliant driver.

To add additional simplicity for those working in a third-party shared hosting environment, bf.forums can also connect directly to an MS Access file using the OLE driver (The third party host must have, or install, bf.forums.  Additional information for hosting companies is available here).

ODBC functionality with bf.forums has been tested against MS Access and MS SQL Server databases.  For the convenience of the webmaster, bf.forums ships with both an MS Access database, and SQL scripts to generate an SQL Server database if it is preferred.

More and more web hosting companies are installing bf.forums on their shared hosting environments.  So first, check with your web host to make sure it is not already installed.  If you are sure it is not installed, you can do one of the following:

1.  Inquire with you web host regarding their policy on installing a forum component.  If they are willing to do this for you, you can purchase bf.forums Express (or Professional), and send it to your web host to install.

2.  As stated earlier, more web hosts are installing bf.forums Express, and your host might me willing to do it for you.  Send a request to your web host to install bf.forums on their servers.  We have prepared a letter that you can print and send, or email to your web host.  Click here to view the letter.

For a web server to smoothly serve bf.forums, it must be running Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS).  It is recommended that the server be at least 600MHz, have at least 128MB of RAM, and have a recent version of the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC).  You can click here to get MDAC version 2.70.  bf.forums uses only minimal disk space (less than 5MB), but will grow as forums and messages are added.