ZetaBoards is a forum software and website created by Zathyus Networks that offers the hosting of Invision Power Board version 1.3. It was founded in September, 2002, and uses a custom made forum software, but also a modified version of the Invision Power Board (IPB) 1.3 forum software. When registering, users may choose whether to have a ZetaBoard or an IPB board. It was founded and is led by Brandon Kopetzky who lives in Bowie, Maryland.

According to its terms of service, ZetaBoards does not restrict forums on the basis of post, topic, or member number, nor bandwidth, nor are forums deleted for inactivity. Google AdSense is the site's main source of revenue, however users may purchase ad removal, as well as increased file space for uploads.

In an official announcement which has since been lost in a data crash, Brandon Kopetzky, owner of InvisionFree, announced that a new name would be given to the software - ZetaBoards. ZetaBoards was designed from scratch, without any ties to Invision Power Board - the software that InvisionFree was based on. ZetaBoards, like InvisionFree, is remotely hosted as opposed to being downloaded like other forum software such as the aforementioned IPB and vBulletin. The software has been described by Brandon as this:

"ZetaBoards is an all-encompassing upgrade that will take the place of InvisionFree's service. ZetaBoards features enhanced moderation, automatic protections against spam bots, a post search, a new PM system, and an enhanced skinning system, as well as many more new features and enhancements."

Limitations of ZetaBoards include the lack of FTP access, editing restrictions and inability to access the MySQL database directly, as the software is remotely hosted.

Beta

ZetaBoards underwent a closed beta test in October 2006, using selected members and staff from the InvisionFree Support Forums. Then on January 21, 2007, a test board for ZetaBoards was opened to the public for testing. Approximately two months after on March 3, 2007, the members were able to register their own test boards.. On November 27, 2007 ZetaBoards completed its Beta phase,thereforeopening its doors to all users. Some upgrades have yet to come, but the official version is - at least - available. Users can register their boards at the registration page.

Features

ZetaBoards comes, as standard, with a variety of features that can't be found in their previous forum software, IPB 1.3 (InvisionFree). The following is a small list of these features.

General Usage

Board Clock

Theme Selector

Collapsible Forums and Statistics

User Controls

Automatic Member Legend

Request Name Change

Moderation

Automatic Moderation Tools

Inline Topic Moderation

Inline Moderation Queue

Report CP

Administration

ZetaBoards' Admin Control Panel has some features which it claims are not found in any other forum system's control panel.

Custom Avatar Galleries

Custom Email Messages

Custom Pages

Joinable Groups

Documentation

ZetaBoards provides documentation that provides information on how to use ZetaBoards and various ways of customising it. The information is stored in the wiki software, DokuWiki and can be found here.

Themes (Skins)

ZetaBoards comes with a single Skin by default; you can see this below, listed as The Default Theme for ZetaBoards. More "themes" can be added by using the Theme Manager page found in the Administrators Control Panel. The Theme Manager page also allows you to modify and delete existing themes.

The Zeta Mono and Zeta Classic themes which were available during the Beta stage of ZetaBoards are said to be made available at a later date.

Gallery

Criticism

Browser CompatibilityMany people have complained about the compatibility issues with different browsers and their rendering of the board. Seth Kinast, one of the website's former administrators who recently retired, has created a table showing browser's advantages and disadvantages. Internet Explorer 6, for example, has problems viewing the board correctly because of Cascading Style Sheets issues. Most of these bugs have been sorted out and the ones remaining are very hard to fix. Communities look towards the release of the latest version of the browser, Internet Explorer 8, for fixing it.

Comparing to Other SoftwaresSmall numbers of people have moved away from ZetaBoards and InvisionFree purely because ZetaBoards was not what they wanted it to be. They wanted an InvisionFree 2 that would still be based On IPB 1.3. Others felt that Zetaboards had taken too long to complete and lacked new features offered by other forum hosts.