salsa-king

thinking of setting up a BBS/forum for something i'm interested in and i can't find anyone else with one thats any good... so thought i'd get my own done.

how do you go about it.. how much does it cost/short and long term etc.

can it be done easily enough?


Phil

suba

you can use www.ezboard.com, or if you want to use your own domain, then you will need to register the domain and have some web hosting that supports PHP/MySQL. with PHP/MySQL, you can then run your own BBS.

domain name - www.1and1.co.uk
web hosting - www.mkhosting.co.uk
php - www.phpbb.com

Markus

Phil,
There's a few options out there. First one is that you use one of the free boards out there, for example, invisionfree.com. Sign up and have a look, it might be what you want. It's pretty good software and works well, but the limitations are that you can't add any modifications to the board, which might be something you want to do.

The other option is to host your own board, for that you'd need at min, web space, and you'd probably want to be able to run MySQL on that web space as well, I know that Plus.net allows this, as I can enable it on the plus.net web space I have.

As for costs, well, depends on what bits of the puzzle you already have, plus how busy the forum will be. For example, You could go to Titan and get a domain name, webspace and get them to set you up a SQL database, all you then need to do is to upload and configure the BBS software.

As for BBS software, my two favorties are phpbb and SMF (Simple Machines Forum).

There are a fair few mods for phpbb, and they can be simple to install, really does depend on what you want to do.

If you have a spare computer then you could test things out by instaling a webserver, SQL, php and your forum software on it, and playing with it locally, to see what you can do with it. I've done this myself and it works quite well, certainly easy to debug stuff.

salsa-king

hi Markus... sound more complicated than i first thought!

look at this forum www.salsajive.co.uk ... you have to click chat room.. then see how PANts the bbs is.. think i could do better?

ta
Phil

Markus

Phil,
Yeah, you could do better than that, of course, there's nothing to say that you have to try and set it up all yourself, someone could help you out

As said, the simple and quick approach might be to pop over to Invision Free and create a new bbs there, then link to it from the salsajive site. If it's not an overly busy forum at the moment, then invision will be ok.

If you happen to own that domain and websapce (salsajive) then we can have a look at who is hosting it and what services are available and thus whether one can easilly stick a forum up there.

i8gtmf

I used proboards when i set up Midland Scoobies it works fine we've made 81,000 posts and 450+ members to date and been running since August 2004. Get the odd server busy message very rarely at peek times but other than that no grumbles considering they are completely free.

salsa-king

costs to you... how much time moderating it do you need... or do you get other/members to be mods quite easily. i take it you buy a new domain name and use that as the link?
how easy did you find it to edit your own sections?

Markus

Mod time, well, depends on a few things:

* How many users you have on the board and how busy it is
* How unruly the users are
* Do you allow annoymous guests to post.

If you allow everyone and their dog access, you might get spammers on the board, so you'd need to deal with removing them. Plus there could be the odd heated debate which you'd need to moderate.

For an idea of how much you'd have to do, take a look at NSR, it's a pretty good example of a very busy forum, I doubt yours would be anywhere near that, and thus require a lot less moderation.

i8gtmf

I bought the domain midland-scoobies.com and link to the forums url from there, your proboards url can be just about anything the midlands forum url looks like this http://midlandschat.proboards33.com

The features of the forum are very easy to use and everthing right down to the forums text can be altered, giving you the option to have different skins for users to choose from.Try signing up for a board like i said they are free probards don't mind if it's not used. I have two one of which i use if i'm changing anything to make sure it works before i transfer to the main forum.

Agreed moderating time depends on who is using your forum we we started in August 2004 didn't need moderating but as things grew i asked member who i knew if they minded helping out. Wev'e gained 6 members since i posted this yesterday so we are busy not S/Net busy but with 460 users busy enough. To date i can recall theres only been a handfull of threads where a mod has had to step in and lock,delete etc so again if everyones friendly mod duties are very light i have 4 mods helping me out to cover those members and the 82,271 post theyv'e made looking at those figures thats around 500 posts since yesterday.
I set the forum not to allow unregistered users to post at all, if you want to post you have to register and if you want you can set the joining process up so that all new members joining have to be approved by mods first, me personally i don't bother with that.
Hope this helps you out

salsa-king

just reading the Mid Scoob site... i am register there too as well ! lol

i like the look.. i take it once registered with pro board you can add and delet what you want... over time can you hav theire URL address... then when i buy a 'proper' .co.uk/.com for the board you can link that straight to it.. that way when fliers are printed i can have a memable web addresssss?

is it ProBoard that deal with registering users i take it?

i8gtmf

Yep once you set your board up you can add or delete whatever you want, your board comes empty so it's up to you to add the section you want all done at the click of a mouse.I could link straight to the board with midland-scoobies.com but i don't, seen plenty that do though.
Your forum members come through you when they join like i said you can vett everyone that joins before their account goes live. When you sign up probards basically ask for your email address and what name you want for your board and thats it your board appears. Their only terms are don't post anything illegal and your site must be english an thats about it

The only downside is that if your site takes off and you deceide to move to your own paid up server somewhere proboards will not transfer the database so you'd have to start again. I'm pretty happy with them we've had the site go down about 4 times since Aug 2004 and they fixed it within hours so no grumbles

salsa-king

you have PM

MadGrip

I use a basic package from integramod but modified & added to it for my own needs. its a very easy package to use & has a great support forum . my webhosting is about $5 a month from media catch .. so far no problems or downtime.

take a look

www.UK-Performance.net

I'm no php guru, just trial & error, but if I can help,just ask