For years, EZBoard was a community that offered relatively cheap and easy to maintain forums for managers. Virtually anyone could register, design, and layout a site and invite their friends to participate. Indeed, some of the largest forums on the internet are built upon EZBoard. Unfortunately, a recent system-wide hacking attack has destroyed the company’s reputation and sent many managers packing. Let’s look at the venerable community and the fatal flaw that has toppled the company from its perch.
At one time EZBoard boasted over 14,000 web communities. Many were started by individuals seeking a discussion forum for their favorite topics, while others were started by business people such as myself. The reasons businesses were attracted to EZBoard were two-fold:
1. We were not knowledgeable enough about PHP to create and manage a site for ourselves, and
2. We did not want to go through the expense of hosting our site on a dedicated server and, instead, used EZBoard’s vast bank of computers to house our communities.
Admittedly, reason #1 was a huge part of why I stuck with EZBoard. Sure, I knew about vBulletin and related forums...