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  • 13-01-2011 10:41am
    #1
    Hanneman213
    Closed Accounts Posts: 59 ✭✭


    Hi guys,

    I am currently trying to help create an online presence for a local record store and one of the ideas I am considering is creating a forum for the store. It currently doesn't have an official site, just a Facebook account, MySpace, etc, so I'm guessing it would be an indpendant forum, something along the lines of say Nuclear War Now. I'm just looking for a bit of advice on this.

    1)How much would it cost to set up a forum?
    2)What sites/programmes are best to use?
    3)Does hosting a forum cost the same as hosting a website?

    I've been messing around with www.forumotion.com, which allows you make a free forum and that seems kind of cool, but I'm not sure if it professional enough.

    Does anyone have any advice/suggestions about creating a forum? I've posted this in 3 places because im not sure which forum its best suited too (its also in internet marketing & web development, so moderator, please feel free to delete the posts which are in the wrong place).

    Any and all help would be greatly appreciated!


Comments

  • #2
    Chet Zar
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 968 ✭✭✭Chet Zar


    Hanneman213 wrote: »
    Hi guys,

    I am currently trying to help create an online presence for a local record store and one of the ideas I am considering is creating a forum for the store. It currently doesn't have an official site, just a Facebook account, MySpace, etc, so I'm guessing it would be an indpendant forum, something along the lines of say Nuclear War Now. I'm just looking for a bit of advice on this.
    1)How much would it cost to set up a forum?

    Nothing if you use a free programme like phpBB. Fairly straightforward to set up, or you could get someone to set it up for you.
    2)What sites/programmes are best to use?

    phpBB, which is free, or vBulletin (which Boards runs on), which is a fee based programme.
    3)Does hosting a forum cost the same as hosting a website?

    Unless the forum is going to be really big (unlikely in most cases), pretty much. You can run a forum off the same hosting package as a website.

    Any particular reason why you want to get exposure for the site using a forum specifically? You can get instant exposure for a site using Facebook, Twitter, a blog and - over time - with SEO. With a forum you need people willing to post topics, reply to threads, etc, which can take a bit of effort and probably wouldn't pay off in the way the above other options would.


  • #3
    Hanneman213
    Closed Accounts Posts: 59 ✭✭Hanneman213


    Cheers for the advice!

    We are working on a facebook, Twitter and blog at the same time as the forum. The store already has a very dedicated, core group of customers who are active on other forums and our thinking behind creating our own forum is that it would be a place where all of the customers could converse together, with each other and the store, rather than the store having to set up and post on a number of different forums. They simply don't have the time for that.

    Would setting up and running our own forum be even more time consuming than that?


  • #4
    Chet Zar
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 968 ✭✭✭Chet Zar


    Hanneman213 wrote: »
    Cheers for the advice!

    We are working on a facebook, Twitter and blog at the same time as the forum. The store already has a very dedicated, core group of customers who are active on other forums and our thinking behind creating our own forum is that it would be a place where all of the customers could converse together, with each other and the store, rather than the store having to set up and post on a number of different forums. They simply don't have the time for that.

    Would setting up and running our own forum be even more time consuming than that?

    Got you - that's great! You can definitely combine a forum with all of the above and they'll all work together. I guess I'd just be clear on what you hope to achieve with the forum. It's not a case of 'build it and they'll come' - at least not at first, as it takes members and posts to build a community and the store's customers may not move to the new forum immediately if there is already a large community that they are a part of elsewhere. It's definitely worth setting up and integrating with the other efforts though, and you'll probably find that a community starts to build up gradually. Only one way to find out!


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