The Clan McLea/Livingstone Forum

Well, as you may guess these last few days have made me feel very strongly that we need new software. To summarise my understanding of the issues raised to date: We would ideally like to have DNA forum and this in the same place. At present DNA forum is "free" and "private" so DNA users would like to keep these facilities. Likewise this forum is "free" to "authorised" users although not private. I believe that both groups would like to be able to restrict or moderate postings from parties with a genuine interest. I think that there is considerable demand to be able to upload photos. So the big question is - Does anyone know of any reliable software that can do this? I came across this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software which I thought useful. I have done a filter and come up with these as the all use MySql (most of my hosting servers provide this Database facility) and PHP apart from MegaBBS which uses ASP.  They all allow WYSIWYG Editing, image upload and threads. AEF - Free - http://www.anelectron.com/ - specialist hosts from $5 a month Beehive Forum - Free - But uses FRAMES so binned. Hard to install. NextBBS Free MegaBBS (ASP) Free / $35 Link Removal & Additional Features FusionBB $149 Standard License, $39 Renewal Invision Power Board $149.99 Standard License, $299.99 Business License Burning Board $32 vBulletin $85 one year license+updates / $160 lifetime license + $30 per year for updates This site is also pretty helpful http://www.forum-software.org/forum-search?web_server=all&operating_system=Linux&database=MySQL This gives a strong recommendation to PhpBB3 http://www.forum-software.org/phpbb3/review and http://www.phpbb.com/about/features/ Unless we need to pay I am inclined to look at free sites first.  So from my perspective AEF and PHPBB3 come out tops.  Apparently AEF is newer and faster. Would love any help and ideas on this.  I think we need to move on. Regards Niall