Whats the simplest way to make a forum?

phpBB2

Whats the simplist way to MAKE a forum.
Not using MySQL

You will need a database of some kind to get a forum to work, I've not come across any that don't require it.

There are lots of php/sql/apache packages out there - don't act like SQL is unobtainable - look at something like XAMP, comes all preconfigured. Pretty straight forward stuff.

"don't act like SQL is unobtainable"
Im not and never was.

Nevermind Ive gotten it figured out anywho.

msn groups are easy to set up.

Posted by Chainsaw look at something like XAMP, comes all preconfigured.

I Love XAMPP! I run it on my server

As do I.

PHP5 supports SQLLite (http://www.sqlite.org/) which is a stand-alone binary flat file that can just sit in the www document root and is structured as a database. It's pretty powerful if you don't have a SQL server available to you and from what I've seen SQLLite works pretty well but it is a memory hog.

There is also writing PHP in such a way to support flat text files. I would highly recommend against this route. It would open up security holes in your server and the possibility of file corruption (i.e. a field that is in the wrong location in the text file) is high. Parsing text is also a fair amount of overhead.