I want to setup a simple forum on a domain I’ve purchased. I work for a travel company and at present they don’t have a virtual place for people to discuss our trips, meet fellow travellers before their tour departs etc etc, so I thought I’d create such a place my self as a bit of a project. I don’t know much about this stuff, but I learn quickly through trial and error so I’m hoping I can get it going!

So, I was wondering if any of you kind folk would have any advice/tips/suggestions to help me out? My first question is probably how do I actually go about getting a forum up on the web (I have the domain, so that’s a start right?)

I was looking at phorum as a free way to get started, anyone had any experience with it?

cheers, appreciate any and all help you can give 🙂

Try Invisionfree forums, its what I use.

http://z6.invisionfree.com/Sussex_Muddyarse/

I used phpbb -seemed pretty good and easy.

I’d say phpbb3 – open sauce, really, really well supported by the community, and loads of extensions to add features you want.

coolbies, I’ll check them out as well.

Is it just a simple matter of installing the software and away it goes? I assume I need somewhere to host it I suppose? What sort of bandwidth does a forum need I wonder?

You will need somewhere to host it – I use dreamhost who are great. If you use the code G030 you can get a year package which would normally cost 120 dollars, for 30 dollars. You would also need to register a domain which would be another 5-10 pounds maybe – you can do this through dreamhost or independently.

Invisionfree is free, just sign up and it’ll appear.

Not used phpbb3

I’d be careful about PHPBB personally. It’s fine if you want to use it but it’s so popular that you need to keep an eye on it because expoits are regular (and spammers know how to post to it). vBulletin is nice but costs, PHPBB we’ve covered, BBPress is what is being run here and then there’s things like Vanilla if you want a more “web 2.0” style look and feel.

For hosting, it’s all much of a muchness in the shared hosting sector. It’s all commodity based so you get a bunch of stuff that you may never use irrespective of the package. I’d assume you have webservers though from what you say.

The biggest thing is how you moderate/manage the community. I quite like how LondonFGSS does it but you could also have trusted members moderate it etc.

psycle – If you’re attending the STW Swinley doofer and you’ve not sorted it by then, let me know and I’ll give you any advice/help I can.