Need Help With Free Forums

[tunescool]

ive had a forum, one forum for 7 years. i post everyday on it and am very serious about it and will always have it. it was proboards which i liked alot and didnt want any other forum host. but i have a celeb pic forum and the pics get to explicit for their TOS and i have to move my forum no matter how much i hate it

i like phpbb but theres no way im going to use it i hate the way you have to put the mods in. ill use mybb but it has to be from a major site that it comes preinstalled and hosts it free with no ads. not a free server ill just get suspended somewhere, a site that has free mybb

if there is a site that comes with xenforo on it ill look at that too

i dont want to use vbulletin, invision free, smf

are there other major forum hosts that will always be online that host the forum and its files for you, that is very customizable on the internet

that i can have provocative semi nude or nude pics on, id really just have maybe a breast shot here and there. and is not going to kick me off their forum for any reason like that


im in a situation where i cant pay a couple bucks a month for hosting so my site is secure from things like that. ive always used a forum without a cpanel but if anyone can guarantee me a free hosting plan for life that would be great. a free situation that comes from an actual paid hosting plan from a host that is established, there forever, and not going to ever suspend me for my content, nude pics

im not even gonna try a worthless free web host server

if theres any forums that are serious software that are gonna be there forever let me know. if it comes preinstalled i need the urls

please help me out

 

[Atrox]

I'm afraid that the chances of you finding a free forum host that does not force ads upon you. You may have to either invest or shut your forum down.

 

[Red Herring]

<snip>

You have quite a lot of demands when you offer so little in return. Finding a free host that doesn't enforce ads upon your website is incredibly unlikely. Free Hosts need financing to stay afloat, you know. And a good portion of that financing comes from ad revenue or premium plans. And you're definitely not going to find something that offers you paid-hosting quality for free. That's completely unreasonable. Web servers cost quite a bit of money to maintain.

Secondly, there's nothing wrong with free-hosting plans. Some of them are actually good enough to maintain a decent-sized community board. And if you're ever in a position where you can't maintain it any longer due to your website using too many resources or such, you can simply download your files and MySQL database for when you find something better or are able to pay for professional hosting. Most free-hosting plans give you almost unrestricted control over your files and databases, at the cost of having limited available disk space, bandwidth and resources.

Lastly, using a free forum host with pre-installed software is an incredibly bad idea; especially in regards to situations like this, where if you run into a problem where the host is going to noose your forums, you can't save your files or database. (Some will, but most won't.)

It's really not that difficult to install forum software yourself. All of them have installation features built into them that make it quite easy, with you only needing to know certain information; such as your host location, MySQL database name, MySQL username and MySQL password.

I'd say you should really lower your standards to more reasonable levels. Because what you're describing and asking for is pretty much a fairly tale dream. 😛

 

[GSquadron]

You can find a free host for 60$/year 😉
I agree with Red

 

[Azareal]

Wow, that's quite some unrealistic demands.
Hosts have to pay quite abit of money to run at all from the high bandwidth costs which the ISPs levy on them to the electricity costs which servers demand alot of and I haven't seen any magical solutions to create electricity with zero cost.

if there is a site that comes with xenforo on it ill look at that too

Seriously? You expect them to dump loads of money for licenses for a paid software for each site that they run? That's insanity. EACH license costs $140.

Do you have a habit of going around giving away thousands of dollars to random strangers randomly? As that's what you seem to expect from others.

 

[P8I.com]

This sounds like the Internet equivalent of begging for government handouts. You can get hosting for as low as two dollars at some places, and you can learn how to upload mods on your own within minutes. Has your current host even said anything about your images? You could always set up a private, non-indexed, section of your site to house explicit pictures.

 

[Smokey]

Good luck in your fantasy world you're living in. Running a successful forum requires money, expecting to get something like Xenforo for absolutely free with no ads? LOL.

 

[Private_HTML]

wow that is really asking for a lot, besides asking for paid hosting for free is one thing, but asking for a paid forum software for free is something completely different...

Heres what i would do if i was you, get PHPBB and a Free Host, if and when you expand, find a paid host, and change software :/

Good Luck!

 

[JoshSmith]

Cant tell if serious or not. Xenforo for free on as many forums as you want! LOL

 

[VirusZero]

Echoing others here, you have a significant number of demands that really can't be reached.

Free forum hosts don't allow mature content for a reason. (Adsense being the main one because it's how they're funded. But it's not the only reason.)
Free hosts (that are ad-less) also don't allow mature content, but for a slightly different reason. They don't allow it because traditionally mature content sites have also been home to scammers, viruses and malware, or at the very least tend to have extremely high, often disproportionately so, demands. (So they use a ton of CPU, bandwidth, drive space and RAM.)

Even on paid sites, many don't allow mature content for the very same reasons. And finding a host that will allow mature content (that allows nude images) can be difficult and/or expensive.

I think your best bet is to just bite the bullet and get rid of the mature content. That will be your safest option and the easiest to execute.
I mean moving off proboards is a NIGHTMARE. You either have to abandon everything you've done on proboards up to this point or attempt a crawler/bot and risk proboards erasing your forum in the process. Since bots/crawlers are against their ToS and proboards does not offer you any way to get your database otherwise.

 

[R44]

Running a successful forum requires money

This.

Ultimately, if you can't afford $3 a month, and $10 a year for a domain, then there should be no issue for you to have ads, people need to profit somehow.

 

[Nyvorlas]

A popular free forum host that I am skilled in is ForuMotion. Send me a PM if you wanna know more 🙂

 

[Ashley]

I think everyone else has hit the nail in the head here. Your expectations are way too high for a free forum host. I'll admit, I had ridiculous expectations as well when I first started running forums, many of them the same as yours, however, I learned over the years that is just not possible at all.