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Free / cheap way to set up a small forum?

N

NTB

Diamond Member
What is the cheapest / easiest way to go about setting up a small forum? I'm thinking about setting a small one up for something at school, but I have no idea where to start. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
Pay $10 month for webhosting at any of the million palces that offer it. Download PHPBB or any other forum software. Read the installation instructions. Install on webserver.
 
phpbb and invision sw are free

so just buy the domain and get some cheaphosting and you're set. as little as $10 startup costs and $5 a month.
 
Originally posted by: notfred
Pay $10 month for webhosting at any of the million palces that offer it. Download PHPBB or any other forum software. Read the installation instructions. Install on webserver.
Click to expand...

Anybody have reccomendations for hosting services? I'm combing my way through the forums (mostly Hot Deals) for services now.

Nate
 
1 and 1 and Invision are powering my forums. The only out of pocket was for the domain name reg. I am very pleased so far with the service. Not a lot of visitors yet as I am still getting the forums locked down for content and that jazz.

Can't beat free webhosting and free software for the forums. I think I paid like $6 for the domain reg.
 
Thanks for the suggestions, everybody. As for what I'm looking for:

Free would be great (might look into that 1and1 deal), but I'm not averse to spending a little money. I was also looking at addaction.net (yagt.org & planethzl are there, among others). I just need to come up with a domain name.

Nate
 
AddAction.net is great but isn't that kinda going overboard? Especially considering cost $6.95 x 12 = $83.40

With a budget of $30/yr or less I would go with SolidInternet.com but there is a 'catch'. No Perl/CGI support.

If you plan on utilizing everything AddAction.net offers then go ahead and sign up with them but it's hardly "free or cheap" as you originally requested.

Do you have any idea how much disk space/bandwidth you'll need?

Maybe start out with 1and1.com for free first, see what your needs are and a few months down the road get a real web host like AddAction.net
 
Very recently the answers would have been godaddy.com for name registering and ripplehost.com for hosting. Ripplehost uses pHpBBS for forums. It was $5 a year for hosting, but I think it's $10 a year now.
 
Originally posted by: RossMAN
AddAction.net is great but isn't that kinda going overboard? Especially considering cost $6.95 x 12 = $83.40

With a budget of $30/yr or less I would go with SolidInternet.com but there is a 'catch'. No Perl/CGI support.

If you plan on utilizing everything AddAction.net offers then go ahead and sign up with them but it's hardly "free or cheap" as you originally requested.

Do you have any idea how much disk space/bandwidth you'll need?

Maybe start out with 1and1.com for free first, see what your needs are and a few months down the road get a real web host like AddAction.net
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice, Rossman, I appreciate it. I'm still mulling all this over, so nothing's set in stone yet. Solid Internet looks like a good deal. The big reason that I mentioned addaction - which I realize may be overkill - is that right now they're offering the first 6 months free, aside from a $10 setup fee. Even with that though, SolidInternet is $10 or so cheaper. I'll check them out.

Nate
 
Another benefit of AddAction is you can host up to 5 additional domains using the same web hosting account.

The "catch" is there is only one control panel (for your main domain) but it's an incredible deal.

conjur uses the addon domain feature to host conjur.com and yagt.org

Good luck!
 
After looking at those two, Solid seems to be the better deal for now. I'll probably go with them.

Rossman - you said that they offer no Perl / CGI support, which means what? I mean, I know what they are (scripts), but how does that limit what I can or can't do with a webpage or forum?

Nate
 
Originally posted by: NTB

Rossman - you said that they offer no Perl / CGI support, which means what? I mean, I know what they are (scripts), but how does that limit what I can or can't do with a webpage or forum?
Click to expand...

Good choice, they are owned by Myacen.com who has a stellar reputation on the WebHostingTalk.com forums

I think for a basic InvisionBoard forum you only need MySQL and PHP which it comes with.

Any web programming guru's wanna chime in?
 
If you don't need much, groups.msn.com gives you a small allocation for free. Twenty bucks a year gives you 30mb. I'm using their free service for a temporary place to park some photos for family/friends since I took my website down, and noticed they had some kind of messageboard included.
 
Hey guys, thanks for the help. I just tried to register a domain name at Namecheap.com, but the site crapped out on me when I hit the charge/process button on the last page (where you enter credit card info). Do I try to run the purchase again or sit & wait?

Nate
 
Are you able to login to namecheap.com?

If you can login, does it show that you have any registered domains?

Have you checked your e-mail?
 
According to my personal page @ Namecheap, I have no registered domains. So it appears the sale didn't go through. Guess I'll try it again.

Nate
 
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