help setting up a forum for a dog rescue

I'm trying to set up a forum using invisionplus.net (not completely sold on it, so if anybody has a suggestion for a better place to host a free forum, let me know) and I'm going crazy.

I'm currently living in Thailand and trying to set up a rescue group in the town where I live. There are tons of street dogs/cats around and a few foreigners helping with "spay/neuter and release" program. My goal is to connect all those people helping dogs so we can share ideas/tips and make things easier for us and the dogs (this is all an out-of-pocket movement, there are no official rescue organizations in the country, so we pay for all expenses ourselves).

Now, I've been trying to set up this forum forever and going absolutely crazy. I managed to create a basic board but I can't seem to do anything with it. For example, I know I can change skins but so far I haven't been able to make it work. Right now, the place is really NOT unviting.

Or, ideally, I would like to buy a domain name, design a free website in a place like Weebly and then host the forum there, but it seems to me that that's not possible. It would be ideal to do it that way, so I could have an intro page and then the forums as a second page/link.

Is anybody here able to help me through the set up process? I'm going absolutely crazy. I spent five hours on this thing yesterday and barely managed to set up this basic horrible-looking forum.

Like I said, I'm not completely sold on invisionplus.net, so if there's a better free forum out there, I'm open to suggestions. If not, is anybody willing to go into the control panel (I'll provide username/password) of the forum and help me make it look somewhat better?

Thanks.

Matera the Mad said:

I would get free hosting with FTP access and database and use SMF (Simple Machines Forum). I've been using SMF for several years now. It's very configurable, and more secure than some, especially those over which you don't have complete control. ( my forum -- where not much happens LOL )

There are tons of free skins available, and it's simple to install them, at least if you can upload directly.

Some free hosts I've looked into:
http://www.free-space.net/
http://www.zymic.com/
http://x10hosting.com/ -- slow, and you have to visit the wonky forun regularly -- horribly wonky forum lol -- but good otherwise a wordpress experiment there

ETA: I would be willing to help. I'm not familiar with invisionplus, but I've been into a variety of other horrible places and got out alive with something done. I like challenges *snerk*

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@ Matera - I sent you a PM.