Forum experience

[trader140]

Looking for someone with knowledge in regards to creating and managing a quality forum (what I mean by quality is that it's unique in style and layout, like BHW for example.)

 

[godmonkee]

What type of forum are you looking in to building?? i.e vbullitin or swf etc etc, and whats it going to be about?

 

[trader140]

I have no experience in forum building at all. I can't discuss the contents, not right now. I'm looking to see the basic requirements, maybe tutorials you can throw my way. Programs would also be handy. I'm posting this here since I'm pretty sure a bunch of you have forums online and probably started out as well.

 

[Entrepreneur]

I'd suggest downloading smf and using their site for getting the install on the money if you get stuck. Besides, forums are a peice of piss; upload script, create database, go to install.php, fill in fields, done. Then add your plugins, theme and what not and you're, within reason, finished. It truly is a very easy thing to do.

 

[trader140]

Are there specific hosting requirements for forums?

 

[Entrepreneur]

Yeah, but most hosting will take a forum, it's just whether they'll take a significant userbase.

With shared hosting you'll likely have Fantastico within cPanel which will ease the installing of SMF or phpBB, to just a few clicks. So doing it that way will be easy.

You can of course start on shared hosting, get familiarised with the workings, then if you need to upgrade, move to better hosting.

The only real requirements at minimum is that you'll need are a minimum of MySQL 4 and PHP 4. Within cPanel v5 of both php and MySQL aare standard believe, so shouldn't really be an issue there.

You can have a look over Simple Machines requirements here.
http://download.simplemachines.org/requirements.php

They also now have a simple installer that i just noticed. This appears to simplify the installing, not that it was hard anyway.