Starting a forum

the hardest part will be getting your forumites to realize that the use of the forum is a privilege, not a right. and to get them to abide by the rules. lol good luck
 
Note that quite a number of international hosting companies oversell their bandwidth and space. The deal might seem good until you actually run the apps you want and realise the amount of CPU time they give you is limited and the database space is miniscule.

Also don't just jump on the fact that phpbb says bluehost.com is the one to use because, ofcourse, they're going to put anyone in there who gives them a referral fee.

Local hosting might be much pricier than international, but the likes of Hetzner offer hosting on German servers (I think) which might work out cheaper. The plus side to this is that the support is local should things go wrong. It's the modern age, I know, but sometimes the whole send-email -> wait -> send-reply form of support doesn't work as well as picking up the phone and making a local call. :)
 
carderne said:
What about setting up the phpbb stuff? Much coding or whatever needed? I've done a bit of HTML and I'm fairly proficient with Java so I think I'd pick it up quite easily.
Click to expand...

If you mean installing it, then most reputable hosts have phpbb3 available for auto-install. Making config changes / installing mods etc is very simple using the admin backend. It's a good piece of software.
 
carderne said:
texo,
What exactly do you mean? So I wouldn't actuall have to upload the phpbb software to the server?
Click to expand...

That is correct - if they have Installatron, Fantastico or other type of script installer than you can use your control panel to install the script and it will handle everything for you.

Some script installers are better than others but all of them can at least install the script.
 
from what i've experienced, most of the 'coding' will actually consist of you editing/customising existing code . . .
 
carderne said:
Ya I thought as much. Last question: registering the domain. I've got the text document form from the .co.za website but would it be easier to do hat through the hoster? You need to include what seems like secondary servers or something in the form - sorry I can't be specific - which I don't really understand, so from my perspective it might just be easier to let the host do it?
Click to expand...

You need the host to host the DNS anyway so it would be much easier to get the host to do it.

SMF is pretty good but nothing is quite as flexible as vB. You can start with SMF and if it works out it's possible to import and SMF forum into vB.
 
phpbb and smf are both good if you havent used vb before. lets leave it at that lol
 
I did a "test" installation on a Windows PC with WampServer and SMF. (XAmpp will also work - I like the 'Lite' version on a USB drive.... webserver in the pocket). For the basic setup, you will not need any php tweaking. Just read the instructions and do the (guided) setup. Not really much to it.
 
Last edited:
I think the only way to achieve that without actually programming it would be to use Manual Acceptance of registration - you would then reject a registration if it does not contain the desired e - mail address.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X