For years now, I have run a discussion forum at http://kenya.rcbowen.com/
It runs on Perl cgi code that I wrote back before the turn of the century, and I no longer understand. It is hugely inefficient, and every time someone hits index.cgi, it uses 70% of the CPU.
Well, this has been going on for more than 10 years, and recently the server that it's running on has decided that it just can't take the load any more.
So this morning I pulled the plug on the forum. I've got to find something more efficient to replace it with.
I'm technology-agnostic, but would prefer Perl or PHP. It doesn't need a lot of bells and whistles. Standard threaded discussion board, allowing for anonymous participation, but perhaps supporting user accounts and a certain amount of voting/moderating, although this is optional.
Any suggestions, loyal reader?
Rich -- take a look at phpBB. I've used it on smaller sites and it has been good: http://www.phpbb.com/
phpBB, when installed plain-vanilla, has a lot of historical problems with spam bots. I don't know the current status of such problems, they may have finally gotten a handle on it.
That said, I recommend Simple Machines Forum.