Forum website?

mihirthakur said:
what type of hosting is required for starting a forum website.
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You can start with a Shared Hosting, If the traffic gets increased, you can Upgrade to Reseller, VPS or a Dedicated Server.

However, before buying a hosting plan, please ensure that your hosting provider allows the upgrade and free migration support.
 
Depends on the forum software and what you're wanting to do with it.

If you need some extra control, extra modules installed on the server level etc, then a VPS is a good starting point.

if you're doing a general vBulletin, phpBB or other out-of-the-box forum software, then often a shared account is a good starting point.

Just keep an eye on server resources and speed. The moment you see a site dragging, it's time to upgrade hosting or potentially move to an alternate host that can support the software and traffic volume.
 
In general words, if you want to check or doing experiment on forum, you should go with Shared in the beginning.

Once your forum subscriber get increased, you aware from future case its subscriber will be increase then immediately move on VPS.

This Suggestion is cost effective for you, you can do experiment without loosing more cost.
 
i was thinking about this as a addon to my website as a means of attracting web design clients by starting a forum with losts of business resources and members. However I have looed around the web and one concern is how flexible something like phbb or vbulletin is in terms of looks ( to keep the brand cohesive ) the second thing was how much management it would take ... and last what seems to be the hardest is to actually get members that are not spammers. I gues one could offer incentives for posting. But how to forums compete with social media groups already doing this.
 
When I ran a hosting company, we initially had a forum as a means of answering questions and gaining general support (things NOT needed in a ticket). We ran the forum for about 2 years, but honestly, it was mainly just staff and a few core people that would post. Clients never jumped into it. We closed it and never looked back.

Customizing a forum is not a problem if you have code knowledge, so that shouldn't be a concern. The big time suck comes to spam and junk - much like ANY forum deals with.

As far as competing online in social media, you'd be surprised at how many people don't actually use social media. Forums are awesome in that they are a knowledgebase of information stretching back months and years, answers to problems getting solved, and they can be indexed by search engines. Social Media groups often are a way of seeing what's going on NOW and less about using search features.

Too many of the social groups I've been in end up with the exact same questions nearly every day or every couple of days. It provides no outlet for creativity or answers, and often needs to be as short as possible (not like the novel I'm writing here now :) )

So they're different mediums for different targeted audiences. They do have a little cross over in competition, but for the most part, they're two entirely different types of people (just like Twitter people/posts are VERY different than Facebook people/posts)
 
bigredseo said:
When I ran a hosting company, we initially had a forum as a means of answering questions and gaining general support (things NOT needed in a ticket). We ran the forum for about 2 years, but honestly, it was mainly just staff and a few core people that would post. Clients never jumped into it. We closed it and never looked back.

Customizing a forum is not a problem if you have code knowledge, so that shouldn't be a concern. The big time suck comes to spam and junk - much like ANY forum deals with.

As far as competing online in social media, you'd be surprised at how many people don't actually use social media. Forums are awesome in that they are a knowledgebase of information stretching back months and years, answers to problems getting solved, and they can be indexed by search engines. Social Media groups often are a way of seeing what's going on NOW and less about using search features.

Too many of the social groups I've been in end up with the exact same questions nearly every day or every couple of days. It provides no outlet for creativity or answers, and often needs to be as short as possible (not like the novel I'm writing here now :) )

So they're different mediums for different targeted audiences. They do have a little cross over in competition, but for the most part, they're two entirely different types of people (just like Twitter people/posts are VERY different than Facebook people/posts)
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Hi Red thanks for sharing your thoughts again.

Im getting here that its pretty much a no go haha. I like what you said about social media and forums in terms of context and Its something I want to believe.

I love forums they have taught me most of what i know and ive made some good friends over the years. I actually cannot say that about social media.

While the information on social media on a certain topic may be lacking in creativity and an expanded dialogue into the question as you often find in forums, i think that most people want the black and white a OR b answer. That is maybe why it does so well.
 
PeterShene said:
i was thinking about this as a addon to my website as a means of attracting web design clients by starting a forum with losts of business resources and members. However I have looed around the web and one concern is how flexible something like phbb or vbulletin is in terms of looks ( to keep the brand cohesive ) the second thing was how much management it would take ... and last what seems to be the hardest is to actually get members that are not spammers. I gues one could offer incentives for posting. But how to forums compete with social media groups already doing this.
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I tried Dolphin as its more than just a basic forum , but all i was getting was spammers signing up, so i closed it down.

But in relation to forums you would be far better creating a facebook page or group
 
At the end of the day @PeterShene, it's the web. Nothing says you can't set it up, see how it goes for a while, and then change your mind later. Yes it's some time and money invested, but that's the case with all marketing.

I don't want to directly discourage you from doing something that didn't work for me.. who knows, maybe the web has changed again and people are back on forums looking for answers!
 
bigredseo said:
At the end of the day @PeterShene, it's the web. Nothing says you can't set it up, see how it goes for a while, and then change your mind later. Yes it's some time and money invested, but that's the case with all marketing.

I don't want to directly discourage you from doing something that didn't work for me.. who knows, maybe the web has changed again and people are back on forums looking for answers!
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Good stuff Conor as always and I agree that the OP should test the waters. You never know - their forum could be an overwhelming success. The odds are certainly against that, but hey, if they can deal with the spammers and have the time and money to pursue their passion, why not?
 
I always recommend taking 1GB VPS hosting and starts with it. So it'll all on your control. It is within budget, install any free control panel like webmin or any and you are done. As many forum requires complex scripting or plugin. It is easy to install in VPS rather than taking permission in shared hosting.
 
bigredseo said:
At the end of the day @PeterShene, it's the web. Nothing says you can't set it up, see how it goes for a while, and then change your mind later. Yes it's some time and money invested, but that's the case with all marketing.

I don't want to directly discourage you from doing something that didn't work for me.. who knows, maybe the web has changed again and people are back on forums looking for answers!
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Yeah I dont think users have changed we have a little blog going and man that thing gets spam comments like theres no tomorrow. I agree that anything that could pay dissidence in most cases is not an easy task and sometimes maybe thinking a bit differently learning from the experience of others can help neaten some of the challenges. Like if this forum was a paid membership nothing pricey just enough to get rid of spammers ut then the initial drawing in of members would be very difficult unless I leverage some of the contact I already have to get it started free for them of course but they would present the value to people that may would to sign up. Like you said given the idea a go on social media like creating a group within a page may also be another way around.
 
PeterShene said:
Yeah I dont think users have changed we have a little blog going and man that thing gets spam comments like theres no tomorrow. I agree that anything that could pay dissidence in most cases is not an easy task and sometimes maybe thinking a bit differently learning from the experience of others can help neaten some of the challenges. Like if this forum was a paid membership nothing pricey just enough to get rid of spammers ut then the initial drawing in of members would be very difficult unless I leverage some of the contact I already have to get it started free for them of course but they would present the value to people that may would to sign up. Like you said given the idea a go on social media like creating a group within a page may also be another way around.
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A lot of forum spammers are not technically hard core spammers, they are people from 3rd world countries who get paid for every forum they sign upto and that is why some content they post is just gobbledegook.

you can normally tell from these type of signups to the hard core spammers
 
Wait what? I always knew most were third world ( btw so am i ). My main assumption was that they are doing " seo" services for some unlucky person by trying to get backlinks. I am going to be honest when i started I did it for back links but tread very carefully not to land up banned and it doesnt pay off that much in terms of seo anyway.

What it did teach me is forums are actually a really good place to learn if you can look past the spam questions or have a forum that is well controlled such as this one. You can discuss things much more than on Social media and imo I hardly ever meet people on social media that have the knowledge that most decent forum guys have.

My first though when I read your comment is that this is a malicious attempt to bring a forum down? If so, why would one do that? Like Rival forums? haha
 
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Back in the "old days" of SEO (8 years ago lets say), Forum Spam DID influence the rankings on Google, Yahoo and Bing. There were plenty of softwares that existed so that the entire process was automated. You could crank out 10,000 new accounts and links within a few hours and you're off an running.

This was a legitimate BLACKHAT way of getting links to a website. Over the years, Google caught on, and was able to devalue links from forums. Then it got into text reading and context, and that created another layout.

Today, that method is more likely to hurt your overall SEO efforts than help. However, because there was so much information about how to do it, people new to SEO still perform the tasks today. you can still go to Fiverr or Blackhat forums and purchase the services that people are happy to sell you.

As far as malicious take downs - those are pretty rare for the most part. A takedown may last a few hours or a few days (depending on what's happened) so the return on time invested isn't worth it usually. It's better to flood the web instead...
 
PeterShene said:
What it did teach me is forums are actually a really good place to learn if you can look past the spam questions or have a forum that is well controlled such as this one. You can discuss things much more than on Social media and imo I hardly ever meet people on social media that have the knowledge that most decent forum guys have.
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Yes forums bring together like minded people, but social media just brings out the ' last night my cat had a poo in the washing basket' type comments or in selling groups of FB people that have no idea what 'sell something' means

PeterShene said:
My first though when I read your comment is that this is a malicious attempt to bring a forum down? If so, why would one do that? Like Rival forums? haha
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no its just a way some people make money to put food on the table
 
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