Forum Software Help

[cryptography]

Looking to put a forum together and was wondering if anyone has had any sugestions as to what to stay clear of or to look out for? i'm not looking for free or watered down, but rather full featured and robust that will allow for a wide range of usages such as chat, polls, lots of options for admins and i'm sure you get the idea.

what i like is vBulletin and FuseTalk that is used here. Any thougts??

RichardAGetz@Comcast.net or post reply here.

Thanks,

Rich :light:

 

[conjur]

vBulletin and FuseTalk aren't free.

InvisionBoard seems to be popular with the offshoot forums run by ATOTers (including myself...see sig)

Oh, and I must say I'm so far impressed with my new host, http://www.thrillhost.com

 

[Rallispec]

fusetalk aint cheap--- cuase you gotta have coldfusion running also.

a Vbb license is about 100 dollars or so-- i think.

inVision board and phpbb are both free, easy to use, with plenty of features-- and many customizeabl themes.... they just aren't quite as good when it comes to really large forums (1000+ users)

 

[conjur]

They're cheap because they're free and most hosts have one-click installation via CPanel.

 

[bsmithy]

vbullitin and fusetalk are ace

 

[Rallispec]

Originally posted by: conjur
They're cheap because they're free and most hosts have one-click installation via CPanel.

I <3 CPanel

 

[TommyVercetti]

Originally posted by: conjur
vBulletin and FuseTalk aren't free.

InvisionBoard seems to be popular with the offshoot forums run by ATOTers (including myself...see sig)

Oh, and I must say I'm so far impressed with my new host, http://www.thrillhost.com

Invision is the only free one out there, I think. But it has all the features Fusetalk has, well atleast the ones I cared about. I have seen some moderately heavy traffic forums use that.

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: TommyVercetti

Originally posted by: conjur
vBulletin and FuseTalk aren't free.

InvisionBoard seems to be popular with the offshoot forums run by ATOTers (including myself...see sig)

Oh, and I must say I'm so far impressed with my new host, http://www.thrillhost.com

Invision is the only free one out there, I think. But it has all the features Fusetalk has, well atleast the ones I cared about. I have seen some moderately heavy traffic forums use that.

phpBB is free and CMS packages like phpNuke, PostNuke, and XOOPS have forums software built-in, too. And those are all free, too.

 

[Nocturnal]

Fusetalk, thumbs up.

 

[RossMAN]

Unless you have a huge ass forum (100,000+ users) and can support the hardware, software $$$$ and dedicated serving requirements of FuseTalk I would go with vBulletin.

vBulletin costs $160 for an owned license and I would suggest getting some nie skins.

I would suggest two FREE alternatives which can easily host a large forum (also depends on your web host)
InvisionBoard which yagt.org uses
pbpBB

Either can be installed in 10 minutes or less, if you have a web host with cPanel you can do it with 2 mouse clicks.

PM me for more info.

 

[cryptography]

Thanks everyone. Again i'm not looking for free and a couple hundred seems perfectly fine for what i want to do. i'm wondering if anyone knows of any 'beware of' or 'stay away from' or 'don't forget' types of information.

 

[RossMAN]

Originally posted by: cryptography
Thanks everyone. Again i'm not looking for free and a couple hundred seems perfectly fine for what i want to do. i'm wondering if anyone knows of any 'beware of' or 'stay away from' or 'don't forget' types of information.

vBulletin is the way to go, trust me!

 

[edmicman]

a bit of a tangent, but wow, thrillhost looks pretty sweet! $5/month for 1GB and 10GB bandwidth? maybe i'll replace the 1and1.com hosting.....its not free, but 1and1 is a PITA to configure and work with....

 

[Kristi2k]

Originally posted by: RossMAN

Originally posted by: cryptography
Thanks everyone. Again i'm not looking for free and a couple hundred seems perfectly fine for what i want to do. i'm wondering if anyone knows of any 'beware of' or 'stay away from' or 'don't forget' types of information.

vBulletin is the way to go, trust me!

That's correct. I have vBulletin. And vBulletin Gamma (beta) is awesome). The amount of things you can do via the ACP and with conditionals.

You do everything within the ACP, even templates unlike phpBB.

 

[RossMAN]

Originally posted by: edmicman
a bit of a tangent, but wow, thrillhost looks pretty sweet! $5/month for 1GB and 10GB bandwidth? maybe i'll replace the 1and1.com hosting.....its not free, but 1and1 is a PITA to configure and work with....

Yep but I would upgrade to the resellers account which conjur has, you can host unlimited domains using WHM ... YOU specify what resources each domain gets

For instance
your personal site can get 50MB/1GB with 10 emails and 2 FTP's.
your hobby/gaming site can get 200MB/5GB with 20 emails, 2 FTPs and 5 databases.

To offset the costs charge friends/co-workers $5/mo to host their web site they also get email, webmail, FTP, forums, pichosting, etc. it all comes standard included with cPanel auto installer. It is REALLY nice

I charge co-workers $50/yr just for an e-mail address, 1 FTP account, and no cPanel access and they gladly sign up for it.

 

[conjur]

I can certainly state that RossMAN is correct.

This resellers account is a DREAM!

I have several domains, myself, and I can now control each one individually and even offer some space to family/friends if they want their own domain for email or something.

HIGHLY recommended to get a resellers account!!

 

[cryptography]

and i thought i was going to have to wait days to get some feedback! looks like vBulletin is out in front here. now i just need to get a reply from my hoster to see if vB can be set up with them or if i need to move over elsewhere.

once again, thanks!!!

 

[RossMAN]

Who is your current web host?

 

[cryptography]

Host My Site. i currently run my foodbank from there. Maranatha Food Bank

 

[RossMAN]

Wow they're not cheap.

dathorn.com offers 2GB/30GB for $13.50/mo

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: RossMAN
Wow they're not cheap.

dathorn.com offers 2GB/30GB for $13.50/mo

But they offer .NET and SQL Server support. I've thought about going that route...one day.

 

[cryptography]

hum, nice prices and everything i need. will look into them. thanks!!

 

[cryptography]

what is cPanel and CPSkins offered on Dathorn?

 

[conjur]

CPanel is the menu for managing your account (Adding email addresses, adding MySQL databases, checking on stats, backups, install scripts for forums, etc.) CPSkins are various themes for CPanel.

 

[RossMAN]

Originally posted by: cryptography
what is cPanel and CPSkins offered on Dathorn?

dathorn.com is probably the most popular reseller web host on AnandTech.

They offer:
WHM (Web Hosting Manager) which only you the reseller have access to. This is where to create accounts, specify what resources each domain gets, etc.

cPanel is the control panel each domain gets. So if you are hosting 50 web sites, each web site will have it's own cPanel, mail servers, FTP servers, databases, PHP, etc.

CPSkins are cPanel skins which include auto install scripts. So if you have n00b users who want to install InvisionBoard they can do that with 2 clicks of a mouse. At last count there were 14 auto install scripts which include forums, blog, CMS, classifieds ads, support desk, etc.