Looking for a place to share your hobbies and passions? Have you ever tried the forum GROUPS on the large social network sites? Chances are the overcrowded environments have overwhelmed you. There is still hope if you are seeking to build your own online community. You can create your own free forum.

Free forums, in the form of phpbb forums are a proven social networking platform and are easy to setup. Phpbb forums started as basically online discussion web sites where people share information and chat grouped around a set of topics, but through the use of “mods” have evolved to become much more robust platforms.

Be sure to look for some key features such as

Captcha – This is that fun word challenge to prevent automated spam bots from registering and making a mess out of your forum. While it is not full proof, it can make a sizable difference in the amount of spam you have.

Email activation – Don’t let someone signup without first getting them to validate their email address. Again this is just one more way of preventing the spammers from making a mess of your website.

Logo Uploading – It isn’t much fun to have your own phpbb forum if you have to stare at the phpbb logo all the time.

Subdomains – unless you want ugly urls, register with a site that offers free subdomains so that you can have an easy to share