As a matter of coincidence, I was updating a
webpage that I host with Homestead.com and I wanted to
implement a web based message board. It so happens that
they (Homestead) has a partnership with a website
called Coolboard.com ( <a href=http://www.coolboard.com target=new>http://www.coolboard.com</a> ) What
Coolboard offers is a free web-based, moderated message
board that fully supports threads. In my experiments
with it (not many), I have found that it seems to have
a good support for various security options. You
can just let anyone post, require them to register
with Coolboard before posting, or something slightly
in between. Also various options exist for
moderating, including having multiple moderators, deleting
messages, and blocking people from posting. There is also
the ability to recieve email when new messages are
posted to a thread.
Since I am new to it as well,
I do not know anything about how reliable it is,
but as a compromise, it seems almost like the best of
both worlds (newsgroup meets mailing
list.)
Just a thought, but I think it is worth checking into
further.
Jon