[MyshMash]

How easy is it to set up a forum?
How much hosting would you need?
Is phpbb good or do you guys recommend anything else?

Any info is welcome!

[tigerlabs]

Very easy to setup a forum. PHPBB is a good choice.

[notbanksy]

Personally I can't get on with phpbb- take a look at simple machines forum http://www.simplemachines.org/

It's really easy to install, easy to use, and has a great library of add ons and extra features, not to mention a friendly and helpful support community.

As for how much hosting you'll need, it all depends on how big your forum gets. The forum software itself will only be a few Mb if that - it's the content that will dictate the size.

If you're making a small forum, I recommend you take a look at vanilla http://vanillaforums.org/ - also a great bit of software, but hard to imagine using it for larger forums.

[Ciwan]

I tried phpBB, but did not like it at all, so I changed over to Simple Machines Forum (SMF), which I found to be much better

So I too would recommend SMF.

[GaryF]

I've been looking into setting up a forum too today, for the first time.

The forum probably won't max over 200 members, will be around a 100 probably.

I was going to go with PHPbb but might chande to simple machines now.



I'm not sure how much web hosting I will need for this?

When I buy a domain from 123reg, will this also be able to host my forum?

[wdh]

I use phpbb for my bike club site. I find it easy enough to use although if you dont update you use to get spammed with registrations from bots. Updated versions are fine though, never tried SMF although it looks fairly good. I just dont want to have to transfer 1000's of posts.
GaryF you will need a database with your hosting as well. Most hosts will provide a MYSQL database, on the host i use its a few more £ a month to update to the package which contains the databases.

[GaryF]

Thankyou WDH. I have to have a free forum really. Does anyone recommend any hosts that will be able to provide this database included into my domain name and site purchase and hosting?

[JSXSolutions]

I am also using PHPBB, easy to set up you just need a server with MySQL and PHP installed,
client loves the forum for his site and i found it a breeze would recomend it for sure,
updated versions of PHPBB are pretty spam free i've found.

atleast worth checking out.

[wdh]

GaryF, on 16 March 2010 - 08:27 PM, said:

Thankyou WDH. I have to have a free forum really. Does anyone recommend any hosts that will be able to provide this database included into my domain name and site purchase and hosting?

The database should be included within your hosting. It just happens that with the hosting company im using they dont provide any dataases in the basic package. They only supply them in the next package up which has 5, so plenty to use when testing and hosting other sites.

[JSXSolutions]

GaryF, on 16 March 2010 - 08:27 PM, said:

Thankyou WDH. I have to have a free forum really. Does anyone recommend any hosts that will be able to provide this database included into my domain name and site purchase and hosting?

What country do you hail from? if the UK i've used 4UHosting and found them very good reliability wise and for have good customer support. (they use Cpanel.)

[GaryF]

Thanks guys, I am from the UK. Does 4Uhosting have the ability to upload forums too then? Is Cpanel a kind of forum service?


I have been wondering something, I expect you can do this, but not sure how much hassle it causes. Can I purchase a domain from one place and host from somewhere else without too much hassle?

[wdh]

GaryF, on 16 March 2010 - 08:43 PM, said:

Thanks guys, I am from the UK. Does 4Uhosting have the ability to upload forums too then? Is Cpanel a kind of forum service?


I have been wondering something, I expect you can do this, but not sure how much hassle it causes. Can I purchase a domain from one place and host from somewhere else without too much hassle?

cpanel is a type of control panel. eg the back end where you manage your site from.
You would upload the forum via ftp like you would your normal website, follow the setup instructions and input your database details and away you go. So yes you will be able to upload a forum to there, i had a quick look and they supply 2 MYSQL databases to use as well.
And yep that is posibble, you can transfer a domain fairly easily which you can do in my case via the control panel.

[NeRo]

I have a PHPBB forum for a car enthusiasts group

I've set it up, so that accounts have to be activated by Admin. I've found this website useful for checking for spammers - http://www.stopforumspam.com/

I manually check accounts, but I believe stopforumspam can be integrated into PHPBB to do the checks automatically

[GaryF]

Thanks for the help guys, that seems to have answered my questions for now, thanks again aswell WDH.

[JSXSolutions]

GaryF, on 16 March 2010 - 08:43 PM, said:

Thanks guys, I am from the UK. Does 4Uhosting have the ability to upload forums too then? Is Cpanel a kind of forum service?


I have been wondering something, I expect you can do this, but not sure how much hassle it causes. Can I purchase a domain from one place and host from somewhere else without too much hassle?

what WDH said about Cpanel, and yes you can upload a forum to it via FTP it installs a MySQL database once you run the config file PHPBB comes with all the instructions on how to do it so nothing to worry about.

[tigerlabs]

Also check out fspamlist.com

[pippin62]

GaryF, on 16 March 2010 - 06:11 PM, said:

When I buy a domain from 123reg, will this also be able to host my forum?

I know it's off-topic but unfortunately I've had problems with the 123reg customer support in the past.

[GaryF]

Thanks guys, will look into it all today.

[MyshMash]

Thanks for the replies everyone, and some good questions there aswell GaryF.

[SEO Guy]

A lot of forums are made from www.vbulletin.com I would look at that