Starting a Discussion Board/forum

[erpowers]

Can anyone here tell me how to start a discussion board/forum? Are there any books I can read that would help me learn how to do it? I am not thinking about making a rival discussion board to DU. I am thinking about making another kind of discussion board/forum.

[spaniard]

1. there a many free hosted services out there

http://www.thefreecountry.com/scripthosting/messageboards.shtml

[Ray Doh]

2. phpBB

I am a big fan of phpBB. It is free, but you need a site to host it from. phpBB has a large user community and there are fairly frequent updates for security fixes, etc. I would start out reading the documentation at www.phpBB.com and then check out the faqs in the discussion forum there.

I use lunarpages as my site hosting company, having recently switched from ipowerweb. I host a forum for my small town for under $100 per year using these tools.

[KitchenWitch]

3. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[XemaSab]

4. Welcome to DU!!!!

:toast:

How's the Wal-Mart shaping up?

[Ray Doh]

5. Wal Mart

Thanks for the welcome!

RE: Wal Mart - the issue is somewhat dormant. First plan shown was for a Super WalMart on the edge of town in our designated commercial area. Many don't want it, but we don't have much on the books to fight it and there is a feel from some that any commercial development is good. Wal Mart must have other fish to fry right now--haven't heard anything on recent plans and the deal may have fallen through on their options. .

[XemaSab]

6. I think it's that way in every town...

"Any jobs are good jobs" vs "pro-gentrification." :P

Good luck educating people about it!!!

And again, welcome to DU!!! :toast:

[Kellanved]

7. phpBB isn't a bad piece of Software to start with.

I do a few projects with phpBB, and it is a pretty cool piece of software. Not to mention: free.
The major downside is, that it is very old by web-software standards. The next version has been under development for a long time and is still nowhere to be seen. The current version is good, but very far away from state-of-the-art.

As a result, basic php skills are recommended to make phpBB fit one's needs. I would not recommend commercial software like Invision, vBulletin or DCForum (the by far least secure POS around), as these are simply far too expensive for small boards.


So have a look at http://www.simplemachines.org/ and www.phpbb.com - both of them are good, free systems.
If you really want the features like WYSIWYG editor without spending a lot of money, WBB might be worth to look into: http://www.woltlab.info/index_en.php

For all self-hosted systems the golden rules are:
I. backup often, backup early .
II. Keep up to date.

As to using a hosted board: you'll have less trouble, but in most cases it is not possible to migrate to a better solution, once it becomes necessary. So, after a certain time it can be a real problem to be chained to the provider.

[pokerfan]

8. Check out ezboard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezboard

You have to put up with advertising on the free boards, though that is probably pretty standard.

[erpowers]

9. Cost and Making money

I know someone said it only costed them $100 a year. Does anyone know if it is possible to make any money off of a discussion board by allowing people advertise on the site? I want to do the discussion board even if it is not profitable, but if I can make money off of it I would like to do that.

[Kellanved]

10. Well, making money is unlikely

The costs of running a small board is in the ballpark of $60-150 a year; more if commercial software is to be used. That does not include time invested into maintaining the board and the software; also it takes at least minimal HTML and php skills.

As to making money: It might be possible to break even, but generally boards are no way to make money. The IT infrastructure required grows at least as fast as the revenue of ads; in most cases a lot faster.

[LeftyMom]

11. How big do you want to get?

The other board I spend time on uses punBB, which works well for us, as we're fairly small (less than 400 people at present) but if you get much larger a commercial program may be a wise investment because it can streamline some time-wasters like keeping banned trolls from re-registering.

Just my experience. I have no techie board-building skills at all, but as a user and mod I've had pretty good experiences with punBB so far.