making forums on the web

[thegamerguy]

hey guys,

With my site i am thinking about having forums on it just like this site. Does anyone know how to make forums like this? I want to make it so my member on my site can talk with oneanother threw forums.

thanks,
Jeremy

[Shorty]

Hi Jeremy,

Welcome to Short-Media :)

We use a prebuilt forum package called VBulletin (http://www.vbulletin.com) but it is a commercial product that costs money.

The most viable free alternative is PHPBB (http://www.phpbb.com/) which has come along well in the last year or so.

There was another free alternative until recently (invision power board) but that has become a commercial pay product like VBulletin but is not as good value in terms of support OR functionality as VBulletin.

To use either package, your webhost (whos server you host your site on) must support the PHP scripting runtime AND the MySQL database server.

PHPBB will work with just flatfiles as a database but can only handle a very small amout of traffic before it would start to suffer from terrible performance (Hence why MySQL is the recommended database for the information in your forum). :)

[Gravite2090]

I'm all for using phpbb. i use it on all my sites that need forums, its very easy to mod, and has a huge following so there is alot of styles and mods available.

[thegamerguy]

I do not get how to use the phpbb on there site. When i downloaded it, there is nothing to do i can not find were it says setup or install :confused:

thanks,
Jeremy
http://www.thegamerguyonline.tk

[Shorty]

Did you check with your host/server that it supports PHP & MySQL?

Inside the zip file you downloaded will be a directory called something like "docs" or "documentation". There will be an installation guide in there.

[primesuspect]

That's something that your web host can help you with. You'll need to be familiar with some basic unix commands or be able to do basic unix commands (such as move/copy files and change permissions) with your FTP program (the program that you use to put files onto your web space)

[thegamerguy]

hey guys,

I do not think that i am going to use forums are my site. It is starting to get confusing and can not figure out how to use it. But thanks anyway for everyone who tried to help me with this.

thanks,
Jeremy
http://www.thegamerguyonline.tk

[Shorty]

Simple question.. who hosts your website files? :)

We can go from there :)

[thegamerguy]

ftp server

Jeremy
http://www.thegamerguyonline.tk

[primesuspect]

Do you pay a company every month for webspace? That company is the host we are talking about :)

[thegamerguy]

no, i have a free host, i use ftp server :D

Jeremy
http://www.thegamerguyonline.tk

[primesuspect]

Chances are a free host is not going to have the ability to do a MySQL database or PHP. You'll probably have to pay for webspace.

I know of a company that will set up a bulletin board for you for a small fee and host it for you as well. It's not free, but it's affordable, and it would get you up and running so that you don't have to worry about the server side of things.

[Gravite2090]

just do a google search for some remotley hosted free forums in this case. i think i remember using ezboard.com once.

[thegamerguy]

I tryed using ezboard.com, but i do not want to pay anything for it. Do you know of any that are free or that you can make on the web?

Jeremy
http://www.thegamerguyonline.tk