[OT] Freebie message board software?

[dogscoff]

I use MySQL because it is free, works fine, is installed by default on web servers,

So how does that work then? I'm 90% sure my friends have their site hosted somewhere (ie, they don't have their own webserver box in their garage) so would they have to download/ install/ learn to use MySQL or would their ISP (or whoever is hosting) take care of all that invisibly?

Learning to set up phpBB on their behalf might be possible, but learning about a database as well sounds like a major increase in the gradient of the learning curve.