How do you make one of these sites?

[Angry Puppy]

I'm trying to talk my local Triathlon club in to adding a forum on to their website. How do you go about setting up a forum? Do you have to pay for it? Who set up this one in the first place?

Fazer Bloke

[rodgerd]

I'm trying to talk my local Triathlon club in to adding a forum on to their website. How do you go about setting up a forum? Do you have to pay for it? Who set up this one in the first place?

Fazer Bloke

Smart arse answer: stick the software on the server.

Longer answer: it depends. Mostly on your hosting arrangements (whether you're allowed to stick your own software up or have to get someone else to host forums, Unix vs Windows, etc).

If you want something that behaves like the forum software here and is free, you could look at the very polished phpBB.

[The Pastor]

Yeah its real easy to set up a forum

www.cheaphost.co.nz - very cheap hosting and very easy to set up a forum (you login and click "install forum"

its real simple and all if you get stuck PM me, im an expert. well at least a Genius.

[SpankMe]

Well it depends a lot on what you can do on the server your website runs on. If you can have a MySQL database and it is setup for PHP, then you can install forums. Invision board is the best free forum software available at the moment. I downloaded them all and tried them out, but found Invision to be the best. My SV1000 site ran on Invision before I decided to convert it to vB. But if you can pay, vBulletin is for better than anything else available.

Of cause if you can't have MySQL/PHP on your server and you don't wont to pay anything, there is always ezboard.

[SpankMe]

Well bugger me! After checking out the Invivion site for the first time in awhile, it looks like they are now charging for their forum software.

[Marmoot]

and how much for Vbulletin you need to spend per month or year, Spank?

[Warren]

http://www.vbulletin.com/
$85 year or
$160 lifetime

phpbb is free (open-source) there are also a few other open-source fourms

Both use PHP and MySQL so check their website host lets them use php and a MySQL database. just type in a wrong url at their site and if it comes up with apache server on whateverdomain.co.nz then it should be fine.

like this http://kiwibiker.co.nz/afda

If it comes up with Microsoft IIS then you may have some troubles getting a forum on the site.

[rodgerd]

phpbb is free (open-source) there are also a few other open-source fourms

Both use PHP and MySQL so check their website host lets them use php and a MySQL database.

One nit: phpBB will use a variety of DBs, including Postgresql and Oracle, as well as MySQL.

[Bob]

I use Voy.com - http://www.voy.com

There are a wide range of options available in terms of design and layout. For an example, take a look at the news board I run on http://www.motobke.co.uk - from the home page, click on "News and views".

Their pages are free, but if you want them to run advert free, you can pay them a small fee. Drawback is, as far as I can see, that you cannot make them "Members only".

Hope this helps,

Bob