Setting Up A Forum..

oHUTCHYo

oHUTCHYo

oHUTCHYo

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Joined
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Guys,

My Fiancee is bit of an expert on pottery and spends countless hours online browsing and speaking with quite a large community of her potty friends.

I've suggested she should consider starting a little website, with the core of it being a forum in order to bring a little community together.

Problem is, despite me being reasonably competent on hardware and software, I'm clueless with websites and forums.

Can anyone reccomend a user friendly paid service for hosting;

  1. A website
  2. A forum
  3. Email

Any advice you can offer would be great. As I say, it's ideally something out of the box she can setup and enjoy, not have to learn the finer points of HTML or forum coding.

Any rough indication of costs would be good, to see if this is a dealbreaker or not.

Cheers
 
Judgeneo said:
Linkedin
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She wants to try and stay clear of linkedin, facebook etc, as ultimately they set the rules. She wants total control on members, rules etc etc. Trust me, when you see a community of 200+ woman on a passionate subject you get extreme bitchiness, which is the main reason for her wanting to have her own community :p

Good shout otherwise though.
 
oHUTCHYo said:
Quite :D

Just been doing some reading and think this is beyond what either of us have the technical skill for (PHP etc.)
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It's really not. Go with Tsohost for hosting it, and most control panel software has a click to install option. I know Tsohost does. It's really that simple. The rest is web based configuration. You shouldn't ever have to do anything via the command line or a terminal.
 
As above really. All you really need is a webhost. And then just install the forum software from the cpanel, vBulletin and PHPBB being the two most popular. I recommend Meir Hosting for hosting, never had any issues with them.
 
If you buy the domain I am fairly sure someone here could have it up and running for you in minuets. All you have to do is learn how to admin it.

TSOHOST
ANY
TSOHOST (included with your domain)

The basic TSOHOST cloud option will be good enough for you.
 
Even the most basic hosting packages these days come with some sort of control panel interface like cpanel or plesk. In there you have the option to install a forum like phpBB with a couple of clicks, and it's done. It's changed a lot from years ago when you had to do it all manually by downloading the forum script, uploading it, all the directory permissions, config file editing, database setup etc.
 
A Facebook group. Don't be one of those 10-a-penny online web forums with more subforums than total threads.

If it works out then you can grow into something else.

If you know very little about the technical aspects of hosting a web forum then the last thing you want to do is some cheap hosting with a 1-click install option that you then can't maintain, it's just begging to get script-kiddied one day.
 
buy yourself a domain name.
Get some webspace either paid or free. (paid is better)

find a forum package you like, SMF is really simple and easy to use but there are bigger and better ones.

I'm not a fan of one click installs as I always seem to get issues with updates etc so do it manually. If you need any help fire me a message in trust. Working on something for someone else on here to so i'll help asap :)
 
oHUTCHYo said:
Can anyone reccomend a user friendly paid service for hosting;

  1. A website
  2. A forum
  3. Email

Any advice you can offer would be great. As I say, it's ideally something out of the box she can setup and enjoy, not have to learn the finer points of HTML or forum coding.

Any rough indication of costs would be good, to see if this is a dealbreaker or not.

Cheers
Click to expand...

I've always used fasthosts and they've been solid enough with speedy servers. Don't be tempted by Godaddy, they're atrocious - their server latency is ridiculously high, and they quite blatantly cash in on the strength of the £ compared to the dollar.

In terms of forums, phpBB is free and is pretty solid these days. You'll need the spam protection extensions as otherwise you'll be inundated with spam posts.

A website is fairly straightforward to build, there is plenty of WYSIWYG editors on the market, or if you're bored on a sunday afternoon, learn a bit of HTML and spend a day making some pages in Notepad++ :)

Email servers are generally provided with a hosting plan, or with a domain - or if you get both the hosts usually flog you at least 10 free addresses and a POP server with a couple of GB's space.

If you're really stuck, send an email my way (in trust) and I'll help you get on your feet if you'd like :)
 
Thanks to some recommendations on here, I use Vidahosts for my hosting. Hands down the best host I've ever had, and coming from Fasthosts, it genuinely makes a difference. Faster, cheaper and the customer service is second to none.

As for software, I've used PhPBB which is free and very popular. I've used MyBB which is also free but for some reason never took off. Both of these have a huge community behind them so help is never far away, but I paid for some software from IP.Board ($175 for the software which includes a year of tech support, I think it's $30 a year or so after that).

IP.Board is fantastic if you are willing to put some cash on it. You can run an online shop, forum, blog, portal, the lot. I'd recommend taking a look at that if I were you. I run my forum with it and I wouldn't even consider anything else.

I ran with the free stuff for a few years and although help is community driven so free, getting that help can be a bit of a mission. With this paid service, I email tech support and get a response usually in a couple of hours. I cannot even begin to tell you how much that is worth to me.

Have a look here, this is my forum.
 
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