Need forum help, and FAST!

[Alumette]

Okay, fellow PCitizens, I need some help.

My teachers' union is going through kind of a rough time right now, and as such need a place to communicate outside of school grounds. I suggested an online forum, and somehow then got volunteered to set it up.

I am next to clueless as to how to do this, but would like to get something put together quickly as we're nearing the end of the school year in a contract negotiation year with lots of unresolved issues.

Any suggestions/help for how to set up a forum would be helpful. I figure if anyone would know about this, it would be you guys. :)

I'm hoping for:

-A free or cheap hosting site
-Minimal ads/popups/etc. (hard to do given my first condition, I know)
-Some way to make it private or pw-protected, so that only our union members can access/view it. I know in the Dawn Patrol forum this is part of the admin functions for certain boards. Is there a way to make the whole forum private that way?

Again, I'd like this to go up quickly if at all possible. And it means enough to me that I'm willing to give in-game influence for your trouble. It's that important.

Thanks.

[Tarkenchi]

I'd suggest using (bum bum bum) a IPB board... They are suppose to be easy to set up, i think there free, and you i dont think they have too many popups... poor alumette!:(

[Got]

http://www.phpbb2.de/

This, I hear, isn't too bad. It's free and apparently easy as well. It comes with full instructions on how to load it up to webspace.

I'm sure one of your many webworthy admirers could probably get it up for you, it seems to be pretty simple if you know what you're doing.

[Alumette]

Uh... would I have to do any <gulp> code?

My HTML is soooo late 19th century.

[Kinetix]

phpbb.com

easy to use, no ads, can password protect everyone

Now webhosting, hmmmm

No coding needed, well, not much, If you needed it Thermyte might help, he's awesome with web-coding.

[ThunderMace]

you can also use Bravenet (http://www.bravenet.com/) for free forums

[inkblaster]

IPB seems fairly good, that's Invision Power Boards (http://invisionfree.com/) for those acronymophobic. Free, easy, and from what I've seen fairly stable.

Others...here...may....have...more...experience... with...them...

[Sable Phoenix]

Maybe get in touch with Julia's Revenge and ask how he set up the Invision Power Board that knightssanctus.com uses. He had that put together in a week, and I don't think there was coding involved, although he did make custom graphics for it.

EDIT: What Ink said.