Current Release: DCForum Version 6.25
Released Date: Sep-10-03
Price: Free

"Greatly customizable interface, easy-to-use menus, and top notch support by the programmer himself. After 3 weeks of looking for a BBS for my company's intranet with the security features I need, I found DCForum2000. I would recommend this to anyone, especially those who want to customize a lot!"

A customer's feedback from CGI Resource Index

Product Highlights

• Easy Installation - A typical DCForum installation requires editing only one setup file. It requires only a minimal knowledge in uploading files, creating directories, and changing permissions (FTP client).
• Minimum Server Requirements - Because DCForum utilizes text-delimited datafiles and internal modules, the sole server requirement is that you can run Perl CGI programs on your server. See DCForum Server Requirements for details.
• Clean and Intuitive User Interface - The interface is the most important aspect of a good forum software. It is imperative to keep it clean, intuitive, and user-friendly.
• Easily Customizable Interface - The overall layout of the forum must be easily customizable in order to expedite the integration process of the forum to the rest of your site. You can accomplish this by modifying a single template file.  Additionally, you can easily add a different layout to each forum simply by uploading a different template file to this forum's directory.
• Fully Threaded Style of Discussion - While DCForum features an optional linear discussion style, we strongly believe that the fully threaded discussion format is the ideal style for a web conferencing software. Unlike the linear messaging style boards, DCForum allows one-to-one interaction among forum users and reduces the difficulty of subscribing to a particular thread among thousands of posts.
• Strict security checks for all requests - DCForum checks the HTTP_REFERER environment variable for each requests.  When the request is called remotely, DCForum will reject the request and redirect to the conference listings.
• Four discussion levels of organizations
  Conference > Forum > Topic > Message structure offers users an easy way to navigate the forum
• Multiple forum types of varying access restriction
  DCForum supports four different types of forums, each with varying access restrictions
  Public forum: Anyone may read and post
  Protected forum: Anyone can read but require registration to post
  Restricted forum: Only registered users with member, team, moderator, or admin user group can read and post
  Private forums: Same as restricted forums but each user must be grant access by the administrator or the moderator
  Additionally, each forum can be set up as a moderated forum.  In this mode, the messages submitted by users are not posted immediately to the forum.  Instead, the posts are placed in queue for approval by the administrator or the forum moderator.
• Full user registration system and user administration program
  DCForum offers varying level of user authentication including optional Email registration feature. It also features full user administration system for managing your user database.
• Comphensive administration program
  DCForum's administration program, we think, is the most comprehensive administration program there is today.  Each admin tasks are categorized in a user friendly manner, offering administrators a quick access to the functions that they demand. 
• Fully integrated user menu - User menu is an integrated user area offering users a central location for managing following user-oriented features such as change password, change account information, edit profile and preferences, manage forum and topic subscriptions, manage buddy list and private messaging inbox, and much more.  Because all user functions are integrated, users can easily access any functions via this menu.
• User rating system
  Registered users may rate other registered users, giving them positive, neutral, or negative scores. These scores are then used to give users a total points and star icons next to their names
• Forum subscription
  Registered user can subscribe to forums to receive email summary of all the new postings in those forums.
• Topic subscription
  Replaces the email notification feature. It allows registered users to subscribe to topics of interest. Additionally, the registered users can manage this subscription list from the user menu
• Option to semi-automatically perform admin tasks
  For those webmasters with no cron capability, this option allows the DCForum to semi-automatically perform various admin task including prune forum log file, prune IP log file, send subscription, and prune session files This is done when the administrator of the forum logs in.

User Function Highlights

Registered users are given following features to enhance their discussion exprience:

• Profile - A user can setup a profile containing self-information.  This profile is then viewable by other registered users.  A user can, however, hide his/her profile in their preference settings
• Preference - A set of forum preferences can be set by a registered user to optimize his/her experience.
• Bookmark  - A user can bookmark topics of interest, thereby easily accessing them at a later time
• Private Inbox - Private inbox is an internal messaging feature that allows registered users to communicate with one another without using their email system.  This system enhances the forum user privacy by providing a way of communicating with other users without disclosing email addresses.
• Forum subscription - Registered users may elect to receive a digest of all new postings in forums that they are interested in.  This list is easily manageable from the user menu. 
• Topic subscription - In addition to forum subscription, registered users may also elect to subscribe to a topic, which allows them to receive email notifications when a new message is posted to the topics of interest.
• Buddy list - Buddy list is simple an address book for keeping your forum buddies contact info
• Scratch pad -  A simple notepad system for keeping notes and reminders
• Avatar - Registered users can add an avatar image in their messages
• Signature - Registered users can define their signatures in the profiles.  This signature is appended to every message they post.

Forum Function Highlights

• Comprehensive user FAQ - The new user FAQ module is more comprehensive than previous versions.
• Search module  - The search module is newly designed for 6.2 release.  It is vastly superior to the module incorporated in pre-6.2 releases.  It offers a slick new interface and optimized search capability and sets a new standard for other BBS systems to follow.
• Forum subscription
• Multiple template - Allows each forum to have different layout style  
• Keeping track of new messages - DCForum 6.2 now offers two ways to keep track of new messages.  1, by the date of your last visit or 2, the last time you time MARKED forums.  This option is selectable for each users in the user preference settings.
• Collapsed view/Expanded view - In fully threaded discussion mode, the user may elect to view the topic listing in collapsed view or expanded view.  The administrator may disable this option.
• Who's online - Allows users to list of users who has had access to the forum in last x hours.
• Global Announcement feature
• Email a topic to a friend feature
• Printer-friendly copy of topic or message

Topic Function Highlights

• Topic types - Users can categorize their postings to indicate what type of posting they are submitting.
• Editing capability - Users can edit their message within a time limit set by the administrator 
• Polls - With 6.2 release, users may now post POLL questions if it is allowed by the administrator.  Otherwise, only the administrator and moderator may submit POLL questions.
• Anchored topics - Administrator or moderator may submit an ANCHORED TOPIC.  This topic then remains at the beginning of topic listings. 
• Locked topics - Adminstrator or moderator can LOCK a topic.  The topic then becomes READ-ONLY.
• Topic rating - If enabled, users can rate topics to indicate which topics are good reading and which are not
• Hot topics - Hot topics indicate topics with number of replies exceeding a threshold set by the administrator.  They are indicated by an animated gif image of a flame.
• Topic subscription
• Option to allow HTML and images in posts
• Intellink - automatically links URLs
• Option to use emotion icons in messages with the ability for the user to turn it off for each post