If you just want a free forum without a lot of work, try Razyboard. You can create a forum very easy, anyway you have several possibilities to adapt it to your vision. You can define the user ranks, define symbols for the different ranks, there is a control center in which you can manage your users, .... You can really adapt a lot of things! But it it possible to get really quick a forum. Perhaps you can use it. Greetings, staph