Forum creation for an utter noob - looking at options

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

Soldato
Joined
6 Sep 2005
Posts
3,781
Hi guys

I've been asked to put together a community website with I would guess may have around 1000 users signing up but far less...perhaps 100 as regular users.

I have been looking at all the past topics on here regarding forums and I'm not sure what to go with, this is what I've read so far...

vbulletin, sounds ace by all accounts. It's certainly not free, having gone from £60 per year, to £173 for (as far as I understand) the development cycle of version 4...however long that is.


Features I would imagine are needed:
  • A system to keep spammers out - captcha? Is it free?
  • An effective banning system for griefers
  • Ease of use, the users and the creator (me) are novices in this area, so it has to be easy to use, front and back end.
  • It has to be search engine friendly, I would imagine that's how the site would generate a significant proportion of new visitors so that's a must.

Is vbulletin worth the rather expensive price now or do the free versions do a good job by themselves?

phpbb seems to get good comments from what I have read here, does it have the features that I have outlined above?

One thing that has got me thinking with vbulletin is that version 4 comes with a "publishing suite" for £173 which 'looks' like it's an easy way to create a website (which is what we would like!) which links into the forum as well.

The users wouldn't need anything that is fancy or flash based, I think the website readers would like as simple (and bandwidth friendly) as possible.

I would be very grateful if someone with any experience could comment on what I have written.

Thanks! :)
 
I use phpbb3 SEO package (it's phpbb3 but with some SEO bits tagged on) It will do everything you've listed above very well. However, as for a complete novice i'm not to sure.
The back end can be a bit quick and there can be some editing of .php files should you want to install any other tweaks. THe back end has a learning curve but nothing a few hours playing shouldn't sort out.


I've never used vbulletin though so it might be the same.


Why don't you install them on a test server and see if you like them before committing?
 
Thank you for the reply. :)

I have done some more digging on the different forum software and it seems like vbulletin has gone completely down the pan since version 4 came out...big price increases, and a huge amount of bugs etc., it's not something I think I should look at.

Thanks for your suggestion, I've been looking at phpbb with my partner today and it does seem to do everything we want it to do! I think the rest of the afternoon would be time well spent looking at the SEO component you mentioned.

We are looking at using Wordpress as the main site, it seems to be able to create a basic site with easy navigation and hopefully it's easy to update and put subpages etc. into it.

It's all quite exciting at the moment, learning lots of new things! :)
 
Have you looked at SMF?. I set up an SMF forum for a group a couple of years ago and we have never had a bit of bother with it.

Granted, it's not got all the bells and whistles of some other options but there are some nice addons available if you hunt around. Very easy to setup and administrate. :cool:
 
I use phpbb3, i think after a few hrs playing the backend is really easy to understand and if you dont get something your be able to find help on the forum.
With regards to search engines i get the majority of my traffic from google and rank quite well so it must be quite friendly and this is a standard instalation with the only mod to change link behavour.
With regards to banning, you can ban by time limits, days or perm and there is post reporting and pm reporting.
Lots of anti spam option including re-captcha
 
TheBigCheese said:
Thanks for your suggestion, I've been looking at phpbb with my partner today and it does seem to do everything we want it to do! I think the rest of the afternoon would be time well spent looking at the SEO component you mentioned.
Click to expand...

I use phpBB as well. You don't actually need any additional SEO. It's all built in to be searchable by bots anyway. Yes the back end can look a bit confusing but it's easy once you get the hang of it and lots of things you'll only ever set up once.

One easy option is to get something like XAMPP and try each one out for yourself. It's 1-click software that installs all the bits on your PC (or MAMP if you're on a Mac) that you need to be able to run it. Then you can install the various board softwares and see which one you like best.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom