For those of you with free geocities sites, you can have free remotely hosted forum boards. For a free Invisionboard go to invisionfree.com, and for a free ikonboard go to myikonboard.com. There are many other sites out there as well , so go check them out!

As to forum software, I'd have to say that vBulletin is the best out there, and Invision board is second place. I've worked as an admin and a user on both of these forums, and they're both great. If you don't have the money for vB then get the free version of Invision.