>>1375I was suggesting you used an existing forum and strip out all of that kind of stuff. It isn't very hard. On most all you have to do is click a button and delete some stuff from the templates.
Do you know HTML? Most of the time templates are just HTML+pseudo-code. You don't have "join date" and "post count" listed by posts since you just have to delete that portion of the template to hide it. Log-ins are strictly for moderation tasks and/or spam prevention. Anonymous posting can either be really open. Or you can require an account log-in but not reveal the poster's identity to the rest of the board. Or you can do both.
The imageboard engines I've worked with seem very basic and not scripted as well in my experience with them. Every owner is forced to add a lot of stuff and basic features like multiple images per post seem to always be either hard, broken or missing all together. Where as with forum software you can upload multiple attachments by default with a post. Putting the image beside/above the post itself instead of listed as a file underneath is a simple matter of editing the template and maybe some original CSS. Forums typically have more spam prevention tools built in. The moderation system for mods is more robust. Roles are clearly defined along with permissions. Lots of other stuff.
You could take the average forum software. Turn off half the features. Edit a few templates and have a basic imageboard in an afternoon. I don't understand why more people don't take advantage of them instead of using the same few imageboard scripts. Forums typically have better integration with other scripts than imageboards to. It's very easy to take something like mediawiki and share log-ins with the forum. There are already tons of pre-made solutions for things like hosting media or real time chat. Forums usually have integration options with CMSs.
The thread management options are much much better to. The only thing you'd be missing is auto-thread deletion. But that's as easy as adding a cron job with a simple SQL query.
I was surprised by how bad most every imageboard script is until I installed them myself. But I suppose a medium designed for anonymous-first doesn't need the kitchen sink when it comes to user and thread management. So it makes sense.