Anyone ever start a Forum?

[QuagmireMan]

I have been wanting to start a forum. I like the layout of this style forum, but how hard is it to add modules for thread rating and maybe a points rep system? Would a general hosting service like justhost be able to handle the load of a forum? When the size gets out of control what do you do?


Any experiences that anyone has would be great!

[techgnome]

It depends on the system... some are easy to work with others not so much. I suggest downloading a few and taking them for a testdrive on your local machine first... see which ones work for you and which ones don't.

-tg

[ckennedy79]

vBulletin isn't too difficult to mod. It's pretty easy actually, I'd recommend sticking more to their approved mods that you see on their site though. I've only had a few mods go nutty, mainly chatboxes and someone wanted me to put in a mod that encrypts pm's. Problem with that was when vbulletin 4.0 came out it wasn't compatible with the encryption mod, and had to be turned off, leaving everyones previous pm's incomprehensible.

Things like thread tools tend to be fairly simple, as long as they "add on" to the app, instead of changing it's default behaviors.

[techgnome]

It also depends on how much you're willing to shell out too... vBulletin isn't free... and there's the look/feel/visual aspect of it. I find a lot of the heavy-lifting kind of forums like vBulletin tend to use templating systems that just confuse the heck out of me and I could spend months just learning how to do a simple template and not get any where. More often than not, I know what I want it to look like and I'd like to just make it go and get it over with. But that could be just me.

-tg

[QuagmireMan]

It is about $200 for vBulletin, but it might be worth it if there are no good free alternatives. Eventually adding (maybe building?) modules is going to be important as well as being able to support a large amount of users.

[Nightwalker83]

Is that $200/month? That would be expensive I reckon.

[techgnome]

it's $200 a license.... used to be an annual deal... but they recently changed it and it is now a one-time purchase... I think.

-tg

[FireXtol]

Most people I know use "The #1 free open source BB software": http://www.phpbb.com/

There's also links to affordable hosting on their site. Have fun!

[ckennedy79]

it's $200 a license.... used to be an annual deal... but they recently changed it and it is now a one-time purchase... I think.

-tg

My friend's subscription to VBulletin was for the 4.0 edition, which from what I remember had an unlimited length on the license.

PHPBB is a good solution as well.

Both VBulletin and PHPBB have active forum communities full of software mods and support. I have no technical reason to favor one over the other, I just have more experience with VBulletin. I'm by no means an expert, but I've played with it enough and added enough mods to figure out the template system.

Really the templates are basically HTML when you look at them, with some code hooks here and there. It's not too much different than working with PHPBB. Stick strong to the old advice "backup before changing" and you should be alright.

The only thing I've noticed is, and this may be only isolated to the things I've done, but when modifying the look and feel by hand, not using a pre-packaged mod, for some reason PHPBB seems a bit faster and easier to make simple changes, whereas I've had to play with VBulletin longer to make similar changes.

I think the $200 for a "forever" type license is worth it, because of their support and all the mods available on their forum. The mods on the free forums for it tend to be decent too, but I've noticed the mods on the vendor's forum tend to be easier to install and have less random issues. I didn't like the time-based subscriptions before.

[QuagmireMan]

I might start out with PHPBB, then if there is some specific need move to VBulletin. I hopefully can setup some space on my website to try it out, without it hurting my main site page. I guess I should backup my site first

[Nightwalker83]

I know some web-hosts also provide forums as part of their web-hosting! I started out just hosting a website but I thought about adding a forum one day. I think I pay $30-$40/per quarter for my web host which also includes a forum.

[brad jones]

When creating a forum, it is getting posters that tends to be the bigger issue.

[akhileshbc]

I'm running a phpBB (version 3) forum. And I think it good enough with all facilities. And they a have large database of mods.