Forum script

[Lynxdry]

Would anyone be kind enough to recomend a good forum services provider that is cheap but professional looking and does not place its logo on your forum, I know of Vbulliten but I think they will place thier logo on your forum, something similar to this forum but its for a non business themed forum any heads up is most appreciated.

[Carl-CSNM]

All forum software will have their logo on, but you can replace it with your own logo. This forum runs vBulletin :)

If you want some paid forum software I'd recommend vBulletin, if you want something free than MyBB (http://www.mybboard.net/) is pretty good.

[Lynxdry]

What would be the advantages of a paid one Vs a Free one I know it seems like a generic question but what do you get for your money as compared with a freebie, I ask this from someone who is a dummie in terms of this whole web stuff but I have some ideas that I think could work and I am on tight budget, maximum 200 dollars. or 120 british pounds give or take.

[Carl-CSNM]

It really depends on the features you want from a forum, most of them are very similar in terms of what they offer to end users. But vBulletin is usually classed as the 'best'.

vBulletin is $180 for an owned license or $100 for a leased license. You will also need a domain name (www.yourforum.com) and some web hosting to host the forum software on.

There is nothing stopping you starting on some free forum software and then migrating/upgrading in the future to some paid software such as vBulletin.

[Lynxdry]

Would you know how much hosting is needed/costs for let say a forum that is half the size of this one and will the 180 means i dont pay anthing to VBulliten anymore and also it means they wont have thier logo on my forum, I really didnt know this forum is also on VB as you cannot see any VB logo on it.

[Carl-CSNM]

If it's a new forum, a basic shared hosting package should be more than enough. You can get a domain name and a basic shared hosting account from under £40 per year. You might also find a friendly provider that will install vBulletin for you for no additional charge. ;)

If you purchase a owned vBulletin license you will need to pay $40 12 months after to continue to receive updates.

This forum does have a slightly different 'theme' to the default one which is provided by vBulletin. If you do go with vBulletin your forum will look the same as the one on the vBulletin website (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/). But the logo can easily be changed to your own logo.

[Lynxdry]

Well am working on acquirring the 2 domain names I want for my forum there is 2 both are from different industries I would be most interested to speak with the friendly provider about the above mentioned installation once I have secured my domain names, so for 4 pounds per months one could host both forums or would I expect to pay more, its basically i want to allow the members to be able to upload video clips and photos on the forum and also perhaps a weekly newsletter to members and to be allowed to have the different boxes around the forum to have adverts in them and be able to automatically charge the advertised a monthly fee that would be paid by credit card is that at all possible or am I in the deep end of a very deep swimming pool were am pretty bad at swimming.

[Carl-CSNM]

Well am working on acquirring the 2 domain names I want for my forum there is 2 both are from different industries I would be most interested to speak with the friendly provider about the above mentioned installation once I have secured my domain names, so for 4 pounds per months one could host both forums or would I expect to pay more, its basically i want to allow the members to be able to upload video clips and photos on the forum and also perhaps a weekly newsletter to members and to be allowed to have the different boxes around the forum to have adverts in them and be able to automatically charge the advertised a monthly fee that would be paid by credit card is that at all possible or am I in the deep end of a very deep swimming pool were am pretty bad at swimming.

It sounds like you need more than a host if you want advertising boxes and payment processing on the forum, unless you have the technical ability to do it yourself.

You are going to need a hosting provider and also a web developer.

[Lynxdry]

I see your point, I had a feeling I maybe swimming in the deep end, how can I make money from my forums if I dont allow adverts on them and how much can I expect to pay to allow this payment for adverts to be implimented onto my forum.

[OldWelshGuy]

Also video is VERY bandwidth & data transfer greedy. Many hosting packages wont allow you to run such sites.

[Carl-CSNM]

If it's a new forum, it will be very difficult to get advertisers at first. Even when you do reach a certain amount of members and the forum is more established you aren't going to make a fortune from it.

I can't advise on how much it would cost to integrate advertising/banners into vBulletin, I suspect it would be a few hours work though.

[Lynxdry]

If I can make like 300 pounds a months from adverts I would be happy with that well even if it makes only 100 a month is still ok by me as at least it would pay for an annual holiday or give me an income to establish more sites.

[Carl-CSNM]

Also video is VERY bandwidth & data transfer greedy. Many hosting packages wont allow you to run such sites.

Yes, we allow video uploading/streaming but customers have to remain within their allocated bandwidth limit, we also have restrictions in place so files of only a certain size can be uploaded.

Depending on the size of the media being uploaded, you may even need a VPS/dedicated server, I didn't realise you wanted to allow such uploads at first thus why I recommended a basic shared hosting account for a new forum. :)

[Carl-CSNM]

If I can make like 300 pounds a months from adverts I would be happy with that well even if it makes only 100 a month is still ok by me as at least it would pay for an annual holiday or give me an income to establish more sites.

I'm not an expert when it comes to forum advertising, but we advertised on a forum earlier this year (with 18,000 registered members) and paid £200 per month.

[Lynxdry]

wow 200 pounds a month would be great for me but I will need to have as you mentioned in excess of about 18-30K for any potential advertiser to see a return on thier money but I think its achievable within a certain period of time, but as it seems from the get go am being an optimistic kind of guy but you can't blame me for trying, btw how much do you charge for that VSP thing you mentioned to allow photos and video uploads?

[Carl-CSNM]

What topics will your forum cover, out of interest? We have VPS hosting solutions starting from £17.95 per month.

[Lynxdry]

one is transport related and one is food and catering related if that helps.

[davidshaw89]

one is transport related and one is food and catering related if that helps.

£200 a month isn't a lot for the amount of work you'd have to put into the forum.

You'll need to spend most of every day creating new threads, and getting other friends/family to do the same. It will take a lot of work and is by no means an easy way to earn the kind of money you are talking about. Then you also have modding to do, and as the forum grows this will become a full-time task in itself!

Populating a forum with enough topics to attract 18,000 people is a lot! (obviously after the first few thousand, you wont be the only one populating it) but for the rest, you need to give them a good enough reason to stick around, otherwise their loyalty will drift. Not to mention that this will take a long time!

Even if this were just a sideline hobby to a fulltime job, your going to have to be really passionate about it to make the forum work!

Rather you than me, but good luck all the same :)

[Place of design]

basically i want to allow the members to be able to upload video clips and photos on the forum
you may be better off allowing users to embed or link to a u-tube video

[edmondscommerce]

I just launched my unofficial magento forum (http://magento-forum.co.uk/) on PHPBB3 (http://www.phpbb.com/) which is free open source software.

No complaints so far, its running on cheap shared hosting which I already had a reseller account for so is really costing me next to nothing.

[Lynxdry]

edmonds Thats a pretty looking forum very basic but still professional looking would they allow me to upload my own logo onto the header and also what about allowing me to have banners for advertising and such like? but thanks for that that link..

[Rapids]

You can do pretty much anything you want with phpbb3. I made one with integrated Mediawiki software. You can incorporate advertising and have your own logo. You have access to all the source code so you can do anything you like with it, technically speaking.

Wanting to earn £200 a month with only £200 worth of investment is a being a lot more than optimistic. As has been mentioned you'll need to populate it so much to attract the members that in turn attract the advertisers.

You don't sound like you have the expertise to adapt the code. Neither do I. Yet, I still managed to do quite a lot of work on my pbpBB3 software - it should be added there are plenty of free modifications that can be done. It all involves file changes though, and really the tiniest of mistakes can make you start over. I did have past experience with other software though, I now install those modifications to earn a little bit of money. I even added a sidebar for advertising on mine.

[cmcp]

you may be better off allowing users to embed or link to a u-tube video

I agree with Place of Design.

[Lynxdry]

Yes perhaps I am being overly optimistic but I am only starting these pair of Forums due to demands from various people who have asked me if I know of any dedicated forums to these niche sectors so I commenced a Facebook group whick has attracted in excess of 1200 members and this is without any formal advertising, I believe the members from my group and those from others will be more than interested in joining my forum and also I am in contact with various industry publications to take out a small 3 inch x 4 inch size advert to promote the forum, my estimation of 200 pounds to start up is really just that in terms of hosting forum lisences and domain name, I did not put the advert cost in the magazine as part of my budget as I know I can start my forum with about 2000 people with hope they would then recommend it to another 1000 people so am genuinely expecting about 3000 members within 3 weeks of putting the forums online, You are also correct with regards to my knowledge In terms of computers I only know how to use the internet, MS words, power points and still getting the hang of excel but Am hoping to take a part time web design and programming course soon to help me run these sites as I have ideas for other sites, but I want to commence with forums as they are the most basics or easiest to get into instead of a fully blown out type website and also am looking maybe to open a online shop by the New Year.

PS. Rapids would you be kind enough to PM your website link so as I can get a feel for it ?

[edmondscommerce]

edmonds Thats a pretty looking forum very basic but still professional looking would they allow me to upload my own logo onto the header and also what about allowing me to have banners for advertising and such like? but thanks for that that link..

Yes as others have said, PHPBB is open source meaning you can do whatever you want.

A bit like wordpress, there are lots of free themes available (its what the site is running at the moment pending getting a custom theme created)

If you can get the forum going and have access to that many potential members then good luck to you, I hope it works out :)

[Lynxdry]

Would you think revenue is based on number of members or how active the forum can be i mean lets say its 3000 people that are keeping active in the forum on a daily basis would that make encouring reading for a potential advertiser ?

[Rapids]

The important thing is the quantity of active unique members and you'll need the statistics to prove that - which of course will take time.

An example: 6,000 active-ish members would be more appealing than 3,000 really active members, in my opinion assuming they are all unique. Basically because as an advertiser we prefer many relevant people to be exposed to our advertisements, over having fewer people being exposed to our advertisements more times. I hope that makes sense and helps!

[Lynxdry]

Just a quick follow on question lets say I do as many recomended about going with a free forum script and then see how things go before I go to a paid forum provider, what I want to know if you lets say went with the free service from provider A but now want to move your forum over to lets say VB but you happen to have like 300 or so members on the free forum script how will I migrate them over to the new script or must I have them all re-register yet again and what of all the posts and activities they have done in the free forum?

Hope you can clear that one up for me and many thanks in advanced.

regards
Lynx

[Place of design]

Just a quick follow on question lets say I do as many recomended about going with a free forum script and then see how things go before I go to a paid forum provider, what I want to know if you lets say went with the free service from provider A but now want to move your forum over to lets say VB but you happen to have like 300 or so members on the free forum script how will I migrate them over to the new script or must I have them all re-register yet again and what of all the posts and activities they have done in the free forum?

Hope you can clear that one up for me and many thanks in advanced.

regards
Lynx

You seem to be talking about 2 things

- A free forum script is something you run in your own webspace, configure the way you want etc.. if your webspace can cope with the traffic, this is the cheapest and easiest way forwards
- A forum provider - will host the site in thier space. They provide the space and the software. Configuring this to yoru exact needs will be very hard if not impossible, because if the provider is set up properly, they will be very restrictive as to what you can do. This restriction will be a. in terms of bandwidth, B in terms of adjusting the code / template, and will for certain prohibit on site video streaming
- A paid for script, is exactly the same in terms of its operation as afree script - you host it in your webspace and petty much do what you want with it in terms of configuring it. Paid for scripts may have more features

To answer you question
Migrating users form one forum to another is easy, so long as you have access to the databases, or your software allows the import and export of excell or CSV files. If you have access to the both databases and webspaces, this is normally a simple task

____

Advice
- Host the site in your own webspace on a shared server
- Choose a host that allows very easy upgrade and migration to a dedicated server. This means if you do get busy, and your site needs it, you can have a fairly easy stress free switchover
- Assess the host in terms of both its shared server offering and price, and its dedicated server offering and price + SLA'a and support for both services
- Choose a forum script that is upgradable and has support, and is proven to work on both busy and quiet forums
- Choose a script that you know you can (in the future) bridge into Drupal or Joomla etc.. because if the site gets busy, you may want the additional user and content control that using a CMS will give you
- Dont allow users to upload video, allow them to embed off site content. This is for a sound reason. 1. video is very CPU intensive on the server. In a shared hosting environment, streaming video is a sure way of landing on yourhosts radar as a site that is "detrimental to the other sites on the server" 2. Video takes up lots of hard drive space. While on a shared host, you are often allowd "unlimited" webspace - on your own dedicated server, you wil be stuck wit just 250GB or similar. The last thing you want to do is be told by your host you need to spend £1500 on a dedicated server, to then find that you need to spend a fortun on adding additional storage.

In otherwords - video will get you in trouble with your sared server host, and make dedicated hosting prohibitivley expensive

[Lynxdry]

Place of Design

Many thanks for that most detailed of responces it is most appreciative, I take your point on the video uploads but how much space would I need to allow members to post photos, as I want to have a gallary section to my forum that will allow members to upload thier photos onto a post but am not sure about the amount of space I would need from my hosting provider any info is most appreciated on this.

Regards
Lynx

[Place of design]

Place of Design

Many thanks for that most detailed of responces it is most appreciative, I take your point on the video uploads but how much space would I need to allow members to post photos, as I want to have a gallary section to my forum that will allow members to upload thier photos onto a post but am not sure about the amount of space I would need from my hosting provider any info is most appreciated on this.

Regards
Lynx

Well look at a repersentative bunch of online images, right click them, choose properties, and record the size in KB. Aaverage them and multiply up by the number of accounts you want X the number of images they can upload, and then add a factor of about 1.5X extra

Also remember most people wont use the gallery

Serving images is much easier, and limiting the upload size is easy too

BTW, lots of forums insist images are hosted off site too

[Lynxdry]

Place of Design

Ahh yes I think we got our wires crossed, I usually put my photos on photobucket then they give me a link/code type thing and then I usually use that to upload my photos on a forum does that mean Photo bucket is hosting my photo or does it mean the forum is hosting it, if its photobucket then thats how I meant for allow my members to upload thier photos and I expect all my members to submit photos as it is a hobby based forum that involved photo taking and such like.

[Place of design]

Place of Design

Ahh yes I think we got our wires crossed, I usually put my photos on photobucket then they give me a link/code type thing and then I usually use that to upload my photos on a forum does that mean Photo bucket is hosting my photo or does it mean the forum is hosting it, if its photobucket then thats how I meant for allow my members to upload thier photos and I expect all my members to submit photos as it is a hobby based forum that involved photo taking and such like.
Photobucket will be hosting the images in this instance, requiring less disk space for you. However, most forum scripts allow you to limit upload sizes. and most shared hosts are offering unlimited disk space

There is no reason why images over a year old cant be spring cleaned out once in a while too

[Lynxdry]

Place of Design

Thanks for that I think I can now start working on finding the best possible paid for forum script and then see how much it will cost me to have a unique forum template to be designed for me, as currently the forum is on a free forum service made from free Machine or something like that but the site looks shabby and I want it to look good as I want to attract in excess of 10 000 members and thus eventually charging potential advertisers money to have banners on my forum.

[Place of design]

In this instance, when looking at shared webhosts

1. Check thier AUP - you are looking for references to bandwidth, CPU usage and other limits on storage and peaks in activity
2. Check how many concurrent connetions they allow to the SQL database (in a forums case, more is better. Expect between 25 and 250
3. Check the maximum database size allowed (which isn't the same as web hosting space)

As a cross reference (to get your bearings on the future) you may want to then go to the support forum for which ever host and forum package you are considering and see who is having what problem, at what point (in terms of business, connections being dropped, adverse speed issues etc.. )

[scotmum]

I allow my users to upload you tube clips and this works really well. I have been plugging away at my forum since May and have just over 200 members. I cannot tell you what a headache running a forum can be at times - the moderation in itself can be a full time job. It has to be more than a hobby as it can take over your life if you are not careful.

One idea might be to add relevant articles to your forum based site so that people have things to read and then perhaps comment on within the forum. You could get relevant advertisers to write the articles for you and then you could charge them for the exposure they get.

The problem with forums as one poster has already suggested is that you need to have a hook to get people to come back. It is very difficult initially to run forum that has a few hundred members all chatting together at the same time. Therefore early members will need to be content with posting a question or comment and then returning later when they receive a reply (they will usually get an email informing them of this if they have subscribed to the topic).

[BusinessIdeas]

Scotmum is on the button with what she says, running a forum can be very time consuming, and getting it to a level where you have members posting consistently is difficult. You have to reach a 'critical mass' of members, and even with lots of members, only a small percentage will post on a regular basis. Godaddy now do a one click install of smf if you use their hosting, which is a great free forum and very easy to manage with lots of mods and plug-ins available which are a breeze to install. There is even a mod that will allow you to put ads in between posts, hope this helps - Gina :)