How to start a web based discussion forum? Suggestions needed! Please help!

[jacksonvillechs]

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

[JamesCWilson]

There are many different places that you can have forums hosted, and not all of them even cost money.

Since you sound rather new to forums, I would suggest starting on a free forum so that you can practice and learn the ropes.

Once you have a grip on what to do, then you can consider moving on to a pay host.

Starting a large,successful forum takes a lot of time,work, and effort.

Not even paid advertising campaigns are always the answer.

A few free forum hosts you could try out are forumotion.com, freeforums.org, and any number of other ones.

Best of luck to you!

[brianf]

Many hosts have Fantastico (cPanel control panel) or Installatron (DA contro panel) which installs scripts with minimal user input.

Forums can be hosted on an inexpensive shared account and it probably won't be necessary to upgrade until you have a fairly large number of users.

Free hosting and unlimited hosting versus paid: I would tend to look for a paid host that is not offering unlimited storage and bandwidth. You can find plenty of hosts that charge as little as a few dollars per month that will offer reasonable storage (500 Mb) and bandwidth (5 Gb). Don't sign up for a year, go month to month until you get a feel for the company. Go with a company that offers some sort of time limited, say 20 day, money back guarantee.

Buy a domain outright, don't fall victim to the free domain with hosting marketing tactic. Ensure that your information is used as the contact information for the domains registration.

Free hosting or free forum hosting is not necessarily bad, however, there are features, ie. control panels, script languages, file access, etc., that may or may not be offered with such a hosting account. 'You get what you pay for' applies.

[aeromit]

Godaddy is not the best example for web hosting service. Your friend will need VPS or server if he really needs to welcome many people within his forums. But i doubth that he will have a hight traffic forum from the beginning. So he can start with shared hosting account.

It is important to choose a reliable company and not to sign up with over sellers.

[ephasenetworks]

When your first starting off, it might not be that big of a deal to work around a shared environment. Bandwidth isn't usually the problem, its the resources that forums use that will red flag your account.

Just start with shared and move over to a VPS or Dedicated solution when the site matures.

[tarsick]

I think you'll upgrade your foum with no issues when you need it.

[JamesCWilson]

Originally Posted by brianf

Free hosting or free forum hosting is not necessarily bad, however, there are features, ie. control panels, script languages, file access, etc., that may or may not be offered with such a hosting account. 'You get what you pay for' applies.

While some of what you say is true, some free hosts vary from eachother just as much as pay hosts do.

Believe it or not, but I have even come across a few free forum hosts that let's you save backups to your computer for FREE!!!


The common misconception is that free forum hosts give you very little control or access to backups etc., and many hosts do fit that description.

Some however, offer much more freedom than others.

[shockym]

It's not as hard as many make it out to be. If you can follow instructions you have already 50% complete.

Many free hosts allow for phpbb (the ones I have seen anyways) these are all free hosts which (as stated above) are good for learning the ropes. If you swap to a paid host, the contol panels will allow for phpbb, SMF and so on - their all quite similar. VB is something you pay for, I would avoid that until you know how far this site is going.

I avoid unlimited as overselling is always crap (sorry to be so blunt). I would try for a hosting company that can provide something within his/your budget before you go overboard and pay for a ton of things you dont need.

That package from GD would work, but check to see what you need first. Many sites that just start out do not need nearly that much until traffic is built up and you know an average of what you are running each month.

We all started out at one time or other, dont be worried to ask questions, we have been there and done that.

[AbbieRose]

Really I wouldn't start thinking big at first. Forums can take a LOT of work to make successful, and that takes time. Others have said it already but you'll be fooling yourself to think you'll have it set from day one.

So stay small, and stay cheap till you need otherwise.

[GenghisChris]

Hi I use SMF to run my forums, their setup is incredibly simple, you simply upload 1 file to the location you want it and run an on line install or you can just upload the whole thing yourself very easily

like mentioned here you wont need dedicated but avoid godaddy and streamline, 2 hosts that have had known issues with hosted forums

forums do take a while to get going, usually via word of mouth so start small, a free host could do or a cheap shared server would be ideal, google and other search engines take a while before they fully proporgate and can search your whole forum so dont expect millions of members from search engines within the first few months

Like I said I use SMF, it's free, their support team are just great and theres plenty of mods and skins for you to choose from, in my opinion it's not just the best free forum software out there, it's the best forum software full stop