Forum Software Reviews

What is YaBB?

YaBB is one of the oldest existing forum software on Internet. It started in 2000, when PERL was the most powerful tool for designing website. YaBB has clearly defined its path since the past 10 years, and still could be considered as a good alternative if you have skills in installing and configuring Apache and pointing scripts to the right PERL executable (using shebang the line). Note that YaBB is NOT compatible with the mod_perl module.

YaBB History

After creating YaBB in 2000, it has been forked 2 years later to create YaBB SE, a complete PHP rewrite of the codebase. This fork, that is now discontinued, has been quickly renamed to establish one of the most known free forum software: Simple Machines.

YaBB could also be considered as one pillar of the current forum software world, because E-Blah (no longer maintained) was also forked from the YaBB codebase, and, more over, the well known Matt Mecham, co-creator of Invision Power Services with Charles Warner, was initially a YaBB developer (before creating Ikonboard).

Note that YaBB had recently lost its main sponsor, Xnull Internet Media, Inc., and took advantages of this information to revamp its main website and be hosted to Sourceforge web servers.

YaBB Licensing

YaBB is a free forum software, but you can ask for copyright removal if you wish, for a given amount:

$0 - Free YaBB Public License

You can use YaBB forum if you agree with its YaBB Public License.

$150 Copyright Removal License

This license is required for any website that wishes to remove the copyright displayed on the bottom of a single YaBB forum..

$50 Executable Renaming License

This license is required if you wish to rename the YaBB.pl main script executable (visible in your forum URL) to another name such as index.pl or by hiding it completely.