Hi Guys,

A friend of mine is interested in starting a large internet forum to discuss hunting, fishing, target shooting, and other outdoors activities. He has asked me for some help in getting things started but I must admit that this is an area where I don't have a lot of experience. I've been involved with computers for many years now but mainly with general PC repair and the desktop support side of things.

I know these questions are rather general and may be hard to answer. I'm just trying to get some opinions that I can pass along to my friend.

1. What all would be involved in setting up a forum? I understand that he would likely use vbulletin or phpBB as the forum software.

2. Would he need to build a dedicated server and have it set up in a data center or could he use one of the "Unlimited" web hosting packages from a company such as Godaddy.com?

3. What type of costs are involved and what should he expect to pay on a monthly basis? Godaddy has hosting packages for $14.99/month with 300GB of space and 3,000GB of transfer. Would a package like this work?

As you can see I'm rather lost when it comes to starting up something like this. Any feedback or suggestions would be appreciated.

James