Calling all Techies - Forum Start-up Help

[JobIII]

Hi All,

I'm trying to get some help in starting a forum that would essentially be a support group for people in my state. Any help, advice, suggestions would be greatly appreciated. PM or just post into this thread.

I would be willing to pay for the forum, but I'd want to have the ability to try and generate revenue through advertising...

Thanks,
~JobIII

 

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[Chadeaux]

Bologna. The forum operators that tell you how expensive it is to operate a forum are scamming you.

The same results can be had using PHPBB or SMF (both free, and the latter was the one used for Tnet for years until "forum foundry" took it over) and a simple hosting account.

Your costs could be as little as $100.00 or less per year.

I pay $85.00 PER YEAR for 750 GIGIABYTES of online real estate. It comes with the control panel options of setting up either of the above forums (or several others).

Vbulletin is a pay service, but you still need to have a host. As an admin on another forum, I can tell you that they are not very responsive to technical glitches. We are having problems with keeping our forum up and running because of a few bugs in an update they required us to install.

Hope things work out for you.

 

[JobIII]

Are you saying I should just get my own domain through something like Big Daddy and run PHPBB on the site? Would BD host or just provide domain names? Sounds pretty daunting to do all this by yourself.

 

[Chadeaux]

Stay away from GoDaddy. You won't own anything and they'll charge you too much.

Namecheap.com for a domain name . . . and YOU own it, and if someone else decides they want it YOU sell it and make the profit instead of Godaddy.

Webhostingbuzz.com is a great hosting company, and their prices are very reasonable . . . they put their money back into their business instead of advertising. All of their accounts come with Cpanel and softaculous which will allow you to install forums, blogs, photo sharing, SQL databases and more. Love their tech support as well. In 8 years of being with them, EVERY time I had a problem (all 7 times, including MY SCREWUPS) I got a response from a PERSON within the hour of filing my support ticket. All problems have been resolved.

Also, the longer you are a member, the bigger discounts you get on hosting etc. When you subscribe to a plan, that is where your annual payment stays . . . your storage and bandwidth allowances seem to go up every year, but costs stay the same for long term customers.

 

[Chadeaux]

If you have time this evening, maybe we can trade a few PM's and I'll try to help you get started.

 

[JobIII]

Hi Chadeaux,

That would be amazing. I'll be online from 5:30pm EST to about 9:20pm or so. Give or take depending on the traffic going home.

Thanks!
~JobIII