[MUD-Dev2] [BIZ] Forum software?

[Mike Rozak]

Anyone know any good forum software?

I tried phpbb, came with Yahoo, and ran into two really annoying problems:
1) Spam. No matter what settings I tried, including the wavy text to create a new account, I couldn't get rid of spam-bots.
2) It was a pain to delete the spam since it only deleted one message at a time, and each time I had to press Yes/No to verify the deletion.

Basically...

- I need a forum... or other "community management" software.

- I don't want to deal with spam.

- I can host it, but I'm willing to pay a monthly fee for hosting if it's easier for me. (It's enough work keeping my game afloat; I don't need to worry about a forum crashing on me too.)

- I want to be able to "send to all registered users" with game updates. (Or is there a better way?)

- I want users to be able to opt-out of the game update E-mails.

- Anything else I should want?

Any suggestions?

Thanks