Advice please on how to create a website similar to this one and netmums. Where to begin

[movingforward1984]

Hi I’m hoping I can gain some advice please. I have an online business idea. However I am not knowledgable when it comes to this like this and I have know idea where I start and this has sadly been stopping me moving forward with it. But I’ve decided I need to do this and I have to start somewhere.
I’m looking to have a website where it will have something similar to this web site and netmums where there are different sections people can choose to visit and then different sub forums and people can discuss things as we are doing here.
But I have know idea where I begin! I’ve read that you can visit a professional website developer but would this mean they will always be looking after your website and running it.
I’m also looking into how I can make money from this and I feel the way to go will be through adverts both from large companies retailers and the general public.
I wasn’t brought up in a technology era and I have never worked in it so my apologies if these questions seem rather laughable. Many thanks for your time and help

 

[TargetICT]

Replied on the other thread. Vbulletin or SMF would do it for you.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

the website is the easy part, driving quality traffic to it and people engaging is the more challenging part. I would always ask myself the question what are you doing better than a competing website. Do not underestimate the costs either on this one, shared hosting might not work etc.... and maintenance will be high

 

[arnydnxluk]

1. Purchase a domain name (e.g. yourwebsite.com)
2. Purchase web hosting, shared hosting is fine when starting out
3. Install software such as:
   • https://xenforo.com
     
   • https://vanillaforums.com
     
   • https://www.vbulletin.com

Your web host may be able to help with installing the forum software, some have auto installers for this kind of thing. After that, you're on your own - you need to keep the software up to date and learn how to use the administration interface (shouldn't be too difficult). The more difficult part will be customising the software in terms of design, custom functionality, etc.

I hope this helps with a very quick intro to what needs to be done.

P.s. A web developer would not be running your website, they would just be there to assist with technical issues (for example customising your website theme). The management of forums, posts, users, etc would be done through an administration interface on the website.

 

[Inva]

You can hire a developer/company to create your website and should you wish, to run it also, but obviously it will cost you extra. Generally there are many costs involved. Creation of the website is the smallest of them usually. Unless if you have a budget to delegate all tasks, you will have to learn them yourself. Maybe you can do a test with some free forums etc, see if you are up to it, then proceed.

Good luck

 

[justinaldridge]

If you don't have experience in websites, web development and online marketing, starting a forum from scratch is going to be a massive challenge.

One of my first websites was a forum which I built to 70,000 members before I sold it. It was terribly difficult to gain traction and it took such an enormous effort, time and hair loss to do it...I probably wouldn't do it again.

To effectively monitise a forum you need a lot of traffic....new traffic.

I already had a technical background so I wasn't starting completely from scratch (I'm was a programmer).

You say you have "no idea". I don't mean to be negative but if that's the case then maybe don't go there and think of a business idea in an area you are more familiar with.

 

[Alan]

However I am not knowledgable when it comes to this like this and I have know idea where I start

To be very frank, unless you have lots of money you can pump into this the idea is a non starter.

 

[xoxoseo]

agreed with justinaldridge. If you wantto earn money from online business, you might start from a blog, and start earning from sponsored posts and affiliate links. You would find lots of info in Internet. Once you gain more knowledge and experience, you might think about sites such as mumsnet. It also depends on niche. Women-related topics are very competitive - mumsnet, fertilityfriends, babycentre and others.

 

[JRyan]

Building a website of your own has already not been a tough work any more:
- In the earlier stage of development of the site, you can host it on a cheap unmanaged VPS server like Linode/Vultr(a $5/mon start server plan provides 1GB RAM, 20-25GB Storage, 1TB bandwidth), and create and manange the site and server using a free hosting control panel like VPSrobots/ZPanel.
- Once you start get a certain number of traffic on that site, you may consider to moving towards a managed hosting to guarantee the uptime and site security.
However, like other people commented, keep creating quality content and gaining traffic would be the more challenging part.

 

[Inva]

Once you start get a certain number of traffic on that site, you may consider to moving towards a managed hosting to guarantee the uptime and site security.

I think the exact opposite should happen, provided that the owner has knowledge of how to manage a server. Otherwise (and i think it is the case in this here situation), they should stick to managed and never move to unmanaged.

That said, best to start with a shared account and move up when needed.

 

[JRyan]

Hello, sorry but I do not agree with you on that. As the early stage of the developement of a site should also be the golden time for a beginner to test and learn how to manage a server and site as there's no effect on the site even something goes wrong during that time.
While once they get traffic on their sites, things would be different, practices and faults will not be allowed then, thus if a user is still inexperienced with server management when he start to get traffic on his site, he has to move to a managed service. Am I right?

 

[Inva]

You are not because server management is an enormous and very high level task which would require years of study. Furthermore, the person here i believe is not much interested in how to operate a server. What they want is to set up a business. Time spent on learning server management is both wasted and opportunity cost.

Also it makes no sense to learn something while planning to eventually delegate it elsewhere. Why learn it then?

 

[arnydnxluk]

I agree with @Inva

This recent attitude from techies that everyone and their dog should 'just' manage their own server is very wrong in my opinion. DigitalOcean, Linode etc are great - lots of resources, very cheap. But techies need to understand that most people probably don't want the hassle of managing a server, being interrupted at any time or day around the year to investigate a server issue. It's also unnecessary. For someone setting up their first website, as is the case here, it's especially unnecessary - it makes much more sense to set up some shared hosting and crack on with learning about website development. Now, if you're a techie who wants to tinker with server management then be my guest but please lets stop suggesting every person who sets up a website should go down this route!

 

[JRyan]

Hello. Yeah, the managed hosting is good as the host takes care of everything, but it's also farily premium, people need to spend hundreds of dollers monthly even more on it as their sites continuou to expand, then these steep hosting fees are actually unaffordable to especially start ups or small business.
Things can be totally different if people learn the basic server management knowledge and manage the server and sites by themselves(actualy it is not that hard to achieve). I believe self-hosting will be the main hosting trend soon due to people's eagerness to control the business budget as well as the fast developement of technology.

 

[fisicx]

I believe self-hosting will be the main hosting trend soon due to people's eagerness to control the business budget as well as the fast developement of technology.

Nope. The man trend will be to use SAAS. The likes of squarespace, shopify and others will become more prevalent and will the use of cloud hosting for those using wordpress.

Most people don't want to mess about with cpanel, they want someone else to look after everything for them. Just getting people to change nameservers is hard enough, anything more complicated than that and they just give up.

 

[Inva]

I think this person may be confusing server management with cPanel. It will be a cold day in hell before non-tech people start managing their own servers successfully. It's like saying i want to open a clinic but i'm not a doctor nor can i afford one, so i'll just learn medicine myself. Basic medicine can't be that hard to learn, i mean if u got a cold drink a tea and stuff like that, totally should work!

 

[arnydnxluk]

Nope. The man trend will be to use SAAS. The likes of squarespace, shopify and others will become more prevalent and will the use of cloud hosting for those using wordpress.

Agreed. SaaS for 'build your own' websites and a new wave of freelancers building websites on top of these platforms for the time-poor (some of course already offering this).

And to add to that, as PaaS and serverless platforms mature, and price comes down, I think a lot more developers will move from self-managing servers to these platforms.

So in my opinion the vast majority of people won't need to manage servers in future. It's certainly not something to worry about when setting up your first website.