Starting a forum

[paulyh]

Hi everyone, I am looking into potentially starting a forum. Has anyone done this? Probably going to use the phpBB software, any advice on hosting providers?

Paul

 

[ryedale]

We host several phpBB forums. It's not the best forum software available but does a good job for free.

As with any open source software, it's vital to keep it up to date with patches and security updates.

If you install it via a control panel installer such as softaculous for cPanel, then that will make it easier for you to manage updates.

 

[paulyh]

thank you for the reply. is there any other forum software that you would recommend?

 

[macmacman]

This one

 

[The Byre]

If you want free, ProBoards is about as easy as falling off a log and extremely flexible for sub-forums, notice boards, calendars, birthdays and all that gubbins.

 

[paulyh]

@The Byre I have looked at ProBoards but I would prefer having my own hosted site. Has anyone had any experience with myBB?

 

[NuBlue]

Personally, I've run several forums on phpbb which, as has already been mentioned, needs to be kept patched up to date. I've tried mybb and Simple Machines Forum, they're both decent packages worthy of trying but I kept going back to phpbb.

If you get a hosting package with an automated installation tool like Installatron or Softaculous, you can quickly install the forum applications they provide into different folders and compare them yourself. Our Installatron includes mybb, phpbb, simple machines, vanilla forums and xmb.

 

[DesignerNick]

Vbulletin or xenforo I'd go for!

 

[OldWelshGuy]

I run a phpbb forum we have 1.6 million posts it runs smoothly enough. I like it, it is a bit clunky here and there. but my tip to you would be decide what you want and stick with it. changing forum software is the easiest way to pee your membership off as everything is different.

 

[NuBlue]

Very true about changing forum software. Once members get used to a forum, they'd rather stick with what they know than switch to another forum package with better features.

Anything's better than Anyboard which I used in 2001, re-created every index page whenever someone posted a message.

 

[PipeTen-Carl]

phpBB is still probably the most popular truely free/open source board.

The main hosting related pitfalls we find customers have with phpBB are:

i) Ensuring phpBB is kept updated to prevent exploit and/or spam.

ii) Ensuring phpBB is appropriately configured and moderated, to prevent both user and thread spam.

iii) The load / performance impact from large volumes of searches across forums with large indexes/post counts.

It is not unusual to come across someone who complains of exhausted database storage or poor performance, to find they had 15 legitimate posts in the first month(s), lost interest or assumed phpBB/forums was entirely self managing somehow, discover they have 200k spam users or posts, and SEO penalisation for spamming and farming...

Those who make a success of forums in my experience always have a tight community moderation team to help promotion and prevent spamming/advertising/miscreants, without which easily turns off users from registering or returning.

/2p

 

[jamesbaldock]

Hi Paul,

Can you tell us a bit more about what it's for? There are some alternatives that integrate well with CMS web site systems so if you're looking to do other things with the web site, not just a forum, they may be worth looking into.

Kind regards


James

 

[willv]

Personally I've always used PunBB 1.2, and then I migrated to FluxBB 1.2 when the software was forked due to an ownership change at PunBB. It really depends on the type of community you are opening, and how much customisation you'll require. Personally I prefer a lightweight, minimal features solution like FluxBB because then it can be tweaked, customised and moulded into anything I want without the additional 200 features bogging down the code that I don't want

 

[paulyh]

Hi everyone, thank you for all your replies. @jamesbaldock it is an idea for a forum for people in the retail jewellery trade. Has anyone monetised their site? e.g paid advertising sections, premium memberships etc? This isn't the reason for doing it, just something that crossed my mind.

 

[toddmeister]

I used to have my own forum. I was planning on using the paid vbulletin software but in the end used phpbb which was very good for free.

The main problems I had were the amount of spam posts & finding the time to create content/threads to make people want to contribute.

Getting people to sign up & contribute to a quiet/dead forum is very difficult. After all who wants to use a community forum with no active community? At first it was fun for me because it was based on my passion, but in the end it was so disheartening spending hours everyday adding content with no response that I gave up.

In my opinion I think traditional forums are slowly becoming obsolete & being replaced by similar community pages on Facebook. That is certainly the case with the niche that I was in anyway. There was a time when I'd log into several forums everyday to find hundreds of unread posts. These days this'd same forums will get a handful of new posts a day whilst the Facebook pages are very active


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Ian J]

it is an idea for a forum for people in the retail jewellery trade.

One thing that you will have to watch out for is that all of your competitors will become members in the hope of picking up business from the forum.

I briefly flirted with the idea of setting up a forum dedicated to invoice finance so that I could answer questions posed by the general public but abandoned the idea as soon as I realised that every other broker and their mothers would sign up so that they could post their "pick me" type responses

 

[TODonnell]

PhpBB or Vbulletin.

If you chose the first, do something quirky to the sign-up mechanism so you don't get loads of spam. I would consider moderating sign-ups by hand, until you've got it sussed. And don't let people have links to websites in their profiles. Then make them pay to have them in their signatures. Get board members who are enthusiasts to be mods.

The main trial will be keeping the cr*p out of the forum.

 

[Formations Factory]

I remember Invision Powerboard used to be good...