Forum software

Scott,

There are two kinds of forum software: free and paid-for. You pretty much get what you pay for - most of the free offerings aren't very secure so eventually you'll be hacked, which is why it's wise to use good forum s/w (which costs money to keep it up to date against attacks and exploits, hence best not being free).

Of the paid-for forums software alternatives my favourite and therefore recommendation is the same as is used for MacRumours: vBulletin - very good, pretty easy to use considering the power and flexibility, and quite secure compared to most others.

By the way, MySQL is the database basis of many fora - and that is free and excellent - so whatever forum s/w you use, MySQL will be a good database choice.

PHP is the other compenent usually used: it too is free and excellent.

So, what do you need? A host that supports PHP and MySQL, Apache is the best for most users, especially *nix-based severs. Forum software such as vBulletin. That's it!

You don't need to know how to program PHP nor necesarily how to construct SQL queries although both skills will help.

Good luck!