Easiest and cheapest way to setup basic internet forum

Do you need a forum? E.g., is it something you could run as a Reddit subgroup, or a Discord channel like where most things are going now?

Otherwise you have options like Discourse which is really popular and they host it for you, but it's $100/m. Or you could run something like PHPBB which is free but that will require the knowledge to set it up and keep it patched, but you could probably throw it on some ~£50/year hosting account unless you have tonnes of traffic.
 
This is a classic Help Vampire question. Read around, OP. This question has been asked many, many times before on the net. There are lots of resources to help you.

What exactly do you need and why? What is the forum for? What have you looked at and tried? What interested you and what didn't? All this would be very useful information. Refinement is important for better assistance.
 
Lysander said:
This is a classic Help Vampire question. Read around, OP. This question has been asked many, many times before on the net. There are lots of resources to help you.

What exactly do you need and why? What is the forum for? What have you looked at and tried? What interested you and what didn't? All this would be very useful information. Refinement is important for better assistance.
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You could say that about literally, everything.

Sometimes its nice to get opinions from people on a place you've been frequenting for many years :)
 
Delvis said:
You could say that about literally, everything.
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You haven't understood the issue. It's about a big, general question that doesn't only have one or two answers [as opposed to a specific, targetted question e.g."what's the best way to set up a forum?" vs "I've tried out Proboards but I can't understand how to set up part X. I've tried Y but it didn't give the expected result, what am I doing wrong?"]. Questions like the forner lead to more questions after more questions to the point where everyone else is doing the other person's work for them.

I'm not saying that will happen with the OP. Just helping you understand the potential issue in general more. I've asked questions of the OP myself in an attempt to hone the request and give better answers.

EDIT: as the poster below as stated, more info is required.
 
The "reply" and "channels" of instant messaging platforms doesn't replace the "threading" available in forums (which allow custom and focused discussions on a specific topic)

Both have advantages and disadvantages and both have thier place. It's easy to dismiss one for the other but I'd say the ops dismissive reply of alternatives is a potential indicator that they don't know what those might be.

Regardless, in response to specific question asked, I'd agree proboards is a good shout.
 
Bouton Aide said:
Forums not as popular as they used to be. I wouldn't got down that route.

What's it for? more info required.
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Some of my interests like motorbike forums are now just mainly found as facebook groups :(:mad: and there normal internet forums are pretty much dead these days

I hate facebook :mad: but am kind of forced to use it these days for reasons like i wrote above
 
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Quartz said:
Unless that software has improved massively, please don't use it. I remember logging into boards running that software and the experience was very poor. Look into Xenforo and VBBS.
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Thanks for your post and I will bear your request in mind but I am finding this solution to be perfect for my needs. While I am sure you are very knowledgeable in this area, I will not be migrating until I encounter a show stopping problem.
 
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