How to set up an internet forum?

frobisher

No, no, no. I'm not going to try and rival boards! I'd love to hear from anyone who has done it or knows anything about it.

Creamy Goodness

http://www.phpbb.com/

free and relatively simple.

CarefulNow

If you have hosting use SMF (Recommended) , Phpbb etc.
If not, use something like www.invisionfree.com.

the Guru

go to www.blacknight.ie

and buy .com or whatever domain name you want and install the Forum script on your site in less than a minute http://blacknight.ie/installatron.0.html thats the simplest way yo do it.

bucks

My best bit of advice would be to go for a free forum like "PHPbb", its a very good piece of kit considering its free.

Then 6 months or so down the line if your forum has "taken off" and become popular then upgrade to " www.vBulletin.com ", this isnt free and costs something like €120 (cant remember of hand) but its the same product that boards use to run this forum and excellent. You will also be able to transfer all your members, post, topics etc.. from PhpBB over to vBulletin thus losing nothing.

Popular forums tend to use up a lot of bandwidth so consider this when you are purchasing hosting...

For the forum in my sig i have 40,000 MB of disk space and 26 Gigs of daily bandwidth!!

My host also has auto insallers for the following forums, Php-BB, SMF and Phorum which makes installation simple.

wheres me jumpa

I use SMF, its a small forum but even so its a joy to deal with.

Seth Brundle

On the assumption that you have a host, then make sure whatever forum you choose is supported by your hosting account.
If its a linux based machine (more then likely) then PHP & MySQL are the route to go (see all the brands mentioned above) or if it is windows based then you have the options of ASP/ASP.net and possibly PHP with the possibilities of Access (fine but not ideal), MySQL or MSSQL holding the data.

Getting people onto the forum and getting them to return is the hard part! have you considered your 'strategy'?

frobisher

bucks wrote:

For the forum in my sig i have 40,000 MB of disk space and 26 Gigs of daily bandwidth!!.

Woah. Isn't that very expensive?

bucks

frobisher wrote:

Woah. Isn't that very expensive?

$5.77 a month !!

Seth Brundle

@bucks - I presume its a US based host (POWWEB.COM). I used to use one that promised the sun, moon and stars and when it came to it they disappeared but I was lucky to have had made frequent file and data backups (2 or 3 times a week).
The amount they offer for the prices seems too good to be true!

bucks

kbannon wrote:

@bucks - I presume its a US based host (POWWEB.COM).

Yep, to be honest i was doubtfull of them at first due to therir cheap pricing and said id give them a go as they were reccomended by another irish based forum.

E30owners has been hosted with them for a year now with no probs, site was down about 3 times and the longest duration was 20 min and there were always quick with query responses..

Ive been a customer for about 3 years now with no probs.

Nothing wrong with a 19ms average ping from my desktop either !!

H3LLg0d

if you didnt want to pay cent and just have a forum

you could just sign-up and have it right there and then

no set-up required


http://www.forumcircle.com/

Bob the Builder

I'd recommend, bluehost.com, then use fantastico to install PhpBB or SMF(SMF=best)... Thats what I did with sum1 elses websites....easy...

deirdremf

Can anyone tell me if there have been any recent developments in setting up a forum?

hammer1981

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

http://www.phpbb.com/

free and relatively simple.

100% correct.

aidan_walsh

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