Ok, time for a nerdy debate.

http://www.phpbb.com/

phpBB are the kind the mag uses.

http://www.invision.com/

The one DragonShadow Studios uses NOW

http://www.proboards.com/

I've used them once and enjoyed it.

You can find free hosting for all of them by just googling "Free -Insert Board Here- Hosting.

phpBB is so much more powerful and versatile as opposed to the other two. Also given it's on your own hosting you can actually back up databases and such, and can edit the server side code enabling you to do all kinds of things you cannot do with simple Javascript additions, or premade scripts alone.

Now if you were to say Invision Power Boards, or vBulletin, then yeah those are more powerful than phpBB but also come with a yearly licence fee.

Neither, I live offline.

Wow. You are much smarter than me...cool...lol I guess you would because your older. <_<

Im not being sarcastic. Serious.

Well I will be doing programming for a living in about a month, and I do have a degree in Computer Science, in addition to my own studies into programming. So yeah I think one of those would do it.

Only reason I know about proboards is I used it for a friends webcomic site, since I didn't know PHP at the time, but then I was limited by only having Javascript to work with so I switched it to phpBB. Plus I am making a MOD for phpBB so I know quite a bit about it.

A degree? Cool.

I haven't done any programming, only if you count Microsoft Publisher, RPG Maker, and Forums.

Yep, BSCS. Also I know how to program in about 10 different languages, and all different styles, so I know quite a bit about programming, and computers in general, from study and self interest.

So while Javascript is powerful, and those free boards do usually provide good service for what they do, they can't match being able to addon other peoples code, or making you're own serverside. But Invision is likely one of the better free ones.