Earlier this week, IPBFree closed its doors to the millions of users it had provisioned with modified and patched versions of Invision Power Board 1.3 Final, which was the last we saw of a free Invision Power Board (or should I say, IP.Board). Despite that, people are still able to get their hands on IP.Board 1.3, which is by nature insecure and outdated software, which does not even run on PHP5. All of these manual procedures are avoided, because these hosts patch such installations and even modify them to add new functionality (if it isn't already redundant to begin with.)

I'm not going to speak out on IPBFree's reasoning for closing; they did what they had to do, and it's none of my innate concern, considering I have never used their services, nor have I ever planned to. Although their demise, along with millions of other forums coupled under that service prove my point about remotely hosted forum software: You have absolutely no say. Why would anyone ever want to have a forum service host it? You lose all opportunity of exploiting the full potential of forum software through the plug-ins (which require access to the files which, oops, you guessed it; is disallowed), and you ultimately lose control of what the title of a root administrator really is. I can understand not being able to get your hands on IP.Board 3, but to not acknowledge the pool of free solutions out there is an insult to the efforts everyone has poured into making all of this software free of charge. Take advantage of the opportunities available around you and break away from all of these centralized services which only seek to make money from free software. Stop using remotely hosted crap, download a free forum software you may enjoy working with, and set it up. Don't be like the millions of fools who depended on IPBFree for their community needs. IPBFree let them down any way that you look at it, and that's the main reason why you should not be trusting anyone with your forum data in such a manner. These services are not practical by any stretch of the term. Prove to the Internet that you don't hate freedom.

MyBBoard comes to mind, along with something as simple as AwardSpace. Setting up a forum doesn't mean you need to empty wallets and break your piggy bank early. That should apply if and only if you choose to head the extra mile. Given that you do, and want a better set-up (domain name, paid hosting,) then you can set up Google AdSense advertisements and generate ad revenue while on free hosting until you feel you have acquired enough to pay off the bills that may be involved with your hosting. A reasonable paid hosting plan for a community does not cost more than $7.95 a month, and a domain name at maximum should cost $10.00 a year if you register it at GoDaddy. If you are serious about your community, you would have to eventually spend money on it. It's impractical to assume that any community can grow when no money has been put into it. You aren't going to get nothing for nothing, as I always say.