E-Blah will probably appeal to anyone familiar with the ageing and much-modded YaBB, but who is looking for a new approach to this style of Perl forum software. The mechanism to add user mods is built-in, users can customize their experience with themes, there are more options for both admins and users and the package runs faster than YaBB too. New versions are still being released regularly, so it would be fair to say that a few minor bugs still remain, but each release moves closer to being perfect. Technical support on the E-Blah home forum is second to none, with a fast and friendly response to queries. Anyone just beginning to mess around with Perl will find plenty to customize here, and the scripts are generally very accessible. If you're fed up with PHP and MySQL errors on your site, or your webhost's maintenance of either of these is unreliable, E-Blah is probably your best choice for a freeware forum.

This has got to be the most packed forum script that is available for free. Support is second to none, and the actual script is a pure joy to use. It is full of features etc, that you can not find else where, and it can be fully customised etc, very quick and easy to do