Creating a forum

Message

Nooj · #1 Post by **Nooj** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 12:50 am

Any recommendations about remotely hosted or downloaded stuff? Is it fairly easy for a techno-numpty to set up? There's nothing for local bikers to do anything on-line in my area. Wiltshire Bikers have a thriving scene based around their forum, but as far as I can see, there's nothing for Berkshire.

#2 Post by **Kwackerz** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 4:49 am

Ive used these before when a club wanted a free forum with no money to pay for hosting

http://www.freeforums.org/

even if you just use these as a practise to getting used to php (later than this site) it's not bad.
Just dont name it what you want to call your 'proper' site, (like.. 'Berksbikers') not even remotely, or else it will challenge your proper site when it comes to websearches..

if you download a forum, load it to your site and point a URL to that particular place, it will cost you a small fortune should the site take off. Unless youre feeling really flush, dont host it yourself!

If you want to run phpbb, click the link 'php' down the bottom of this site, where it says Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group

There are other forms of forum, but I only can really comment on phpbb's which I find easy to use and have great support.

Nooj · #3 Post by **Nooj** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 3:53 pm

Interesting, if a bit over my head. What about running costs and advertising? I don't mind some advertising for local companies, and would actually like to encourage smaller companies that do things like leather repairs, places that host bike meets etc. to advertise there and obviously I'd want to advertise Shiny Bike Syndrome as well (advertising for my company is one of the reasons I'm thinking about doing this), do I get a choice in who advertises? Does it go towards the forum running cost, or would it go straight into the host's pockets?

#4 Post by **Kwackerz** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 4:46 pm

Physical running costs..
All depends really.

You can download the phpbb for free as well as various template styles (like we have here.. the different colour site layouts) Thats all free,

The work on advertising, you can do for free. Dunno which style you're running, but you can edit the pics and banners (like the RS logo on here) and turn that into advertising space.. that's easy to do and you obviously set up your costings yourself.
You can do what I had here with forum sponsorship, which is a small image against a forum, again set to your own costings as it's all edited by you as the webmaster.

Site running costs.. well you already have a physical presence on the net with SBS, so have a look at what traffic you can have before you incur further charges for bandwidth. If your business is paying for the site anyway, you could install the forum on your site then point a £2.99 .co.uk site domain name at it. (I use 1 and 1 internet for domains)

You can use advertising space to pay for any extra bandwidth charges as your forum takes off, however when youre doing that, consider how youre going to control banners and shite like that. To start with fuck signature banners off, as they eat onto your bandwidth..

RS costs.. a lot.. and we only pay a percentage towards it as Jahlis the company who host us, are as keen to see RS and ARS keep going as we are and for no reason other than 'It's RS'

Even so it costs us hundreds a year in our donation.

Pity youre not local, i'd pop round and help you out a bit

#5 Post by **Kwackerz** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 4:57 pm

Ah, something else.

You'll end up spending a lot of time editing the forum, setting it up and then running it. things like spam member killing, etc.. always takes up time, especially on a new site as as soon as there's like 5 members, if you start getting spam joining, and it isnt controlled, the site will die. instantly.

Remember ARS Mk1? That almost died cos it wasnt adminned for a while.

Take that into consideration. If it's going to showcase your business (like griff's does) you HAVE to spend the time running it, or get trustable people in to help manage it. As soon as you make someone a global admin (like me n sam, not a moderator like Alad or D_R) they instantly have the ability to rip the site apart and turn it into a big black hole if they decide they dont like you.. there is a big Nuke button.

Nooj · #6 Post by **Nooj** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 4:06 pm

Am experimenting on Freeforum which seems to be fairly straight forward, even I can understand most of it. I'll see how I get on over the next few weeks with it before deciding if I'm up to creating and running a 'proper' forum. Thanks for the tips.