Recently, I have been looking at free and easy to use website to create forums and discussion boards. I found a few, but what bothered me was the free ads sprawled all over the place and the confusing navigation. I did find a website that you can create a forum and they will host it for you. The site is Nabble. Here are some of the cool features that drew me to this site:

• Free and remotely hosted
• RSS feeds
• You can allow anonymous users to post or restrict the forum to read only. When you restrict anonymous and they try to post you can prompt them to register for a username
• You can easily make others admins by just adding their email address
• RSS feeds are provided for the forum
• You can have emails sent to you if somebody replies to a forum
• You can email in a reply to the forum (which is unique to each user)
• You can change the layout (make it look like phphBB layout and more) and appearance (add CSS or choose from a pre-existing design)
• You can embed the forum into a webpage (love this feature and works well)
• You can change the structure (make sub-forums, pinned topics)
• You can search forums by using a search bar
• Easy to set up and use, no need to know coding

The embedding of the forum works well and I tested it out. If you want to see the forum I set up, click on the link below:

http://n2.nabble.com/Angel-Brady%27s-World-f2244914.html

Here is also a list of other sites and programs I found (may be more appropriate  for what you are trying to accomplish):

• Invision: http://invisionfree.com/index.php?p=faq
• eBoards4all: http://www.eboards4all.com/0000/
• Zetaboards: http://s1.zetaboards.com/
• BeeHive Forum: http://sourceforge.net/projects/beehiveforum/ (free need to install and download- uses php and MySQL)
• phpBB: http://www.phpbb.com/ Needs to be installed
• Freewebspace: http://www.freewebspace-us.com/
• Simple Machines: http://simplemachines.org/ -download and install
• Hyperboards: http://hyperboards.com/
• Nabble: http://www.nabble.com/

I hope this helps! Enjoy!