AEF Web Hosting

AEF - Advanced Electron Forum is a free bulletin board software written in PHP and MySQL with loads of features

OPTIMIZED HOSTING
FOR AEF

We offer the best feature on the market

AEFs full name is Advanced Electron Forum. This bulletin board software is free software. It is written in PHP and MySQL. AEF has a very simple and easy to use Administration Panel and installing this software is a piece of cake! You can install new themes, customize themes the way you want. The User Control Panel has a simple yet beautiful interface where users can set their preferences for the board. This Bulletin board or forum software has all the general features that a forum software should have. Yet it is so Fast!

STANDARD
WEB HOSTING

For Prices and Features

Click Here

Unlimited ULTRA SSD Storage
450+ Cloud Apps
Unlimited E-Mail Accounts
Intershield Protection
30 Days Money Back Guarantee
Free Website Migration

24/7 Customer Service

Unlimited Space
and Bandwidth

Unlimted Email
Accounts

One Click Install
Scripts

30 Day Money
Back guarantee

Interserver provides

shared, vps and dedicated hosting powered by AEF

AEF stands for Advanced Electron Forum and is a fairly simple, yet effective, forums platform. The system was designed by two people who got their start learning how to hack major forums software. From there, they decided to create their own forums that would give them added experience and something more legitimate to do. After working on it for a little over a year, they launched AEF on May 5 th of 2007. Since then they have released a number of updates and improvements, though there hasn’t been anything in the last few years.

The platform is still available for download and use, but they don’t seem to be actively providing updates any longer (they have not officially said this). There is some talk on their own forums about having other developers take this system over, but it is not yet known if that will happen. In its current state, AEF is functional but out of date. It is a good system for people who just want something very simple that they can play around with, but if you’re looking to start serious forums, you’ll want to find something else.

Star Rating:

AEF Pros

Simple Design
The whole platform is quite simple to install and use. They did a good job at making a user friendly setup for both the visitors and the admins.
Free
This system is completely free to use.

AEF Cons

Updates
There haven’t been any updates in years and it doesn’t seem like this is going to change any time soon.
Security
Due to the fact that it is so out of date, there are likely a number of security vulnerabilities related to modern browsers.

AEF Review

Initial Install
You can have AEF installed on your InterServer hosting server in just moments. It can be up and running with the default install, but you will want to make some adjustments and set up admin accounts and things like that. Even changing the look of your forums with themes and color changes is going to be quite easy, but does take a little bit of time. Compared to more advanced systems, however, this one can be built a lot faster.
Plugins
They have some plugins (called mods) available through their forums. As with the main software itself, they are out of date so be careful when installing them. If you want to code your own plugins and you are a good developer, that shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
Themes
They have quite a few themes available for download and installation right from their main site. These themes allow you to customize the layout and other aspects of the system. Most of them, however, have a dated appearance, which is not surprising given the lack of updates the platform is getting.
Customization
You can customize quite a bit on this forum. Using the back end settings you will be able to adjust coloring, categories, post types and things like that. You can also easily add logos and custom icons to the forums. All of this can be done without any trouble on these forums, which is what many people will like about it.
SEO Friendly
There are some nice SEO tools built right into these forums. They allow you to customize the URLs for each post, archive properly and do other things that will help you rank well. Busy forums naturally do quite well with SEO and this platform is no exception.
Cost of Running
This system is entirely free and can be used for any type of site without charge. The site is small and efficient as well, which means you don’t need an expensive hosting package. Choosing an entry level option from InterServer is an affordable option for everyone.
Other Programs Like it

If you don’t think that AEF is the right option for your forums, there are plenty of alternatives available. The following forums can be installed quickly and easily using the install scripts available with all InterServer hosting packages:

Final Thoughts

AEF is a nice little forum option that will allow you to create a simple set of forums to create a community. Sadly, there haven’t been any updates to this system in quite some time and it is unlikely that there will be in the future. With this in mind, it doesn’t make sense to start a new site using this platform. If you just want something very simple to facilitate online conversation, it could work but there are better options available.