Planning Help (Need some type of forum info please)

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Loopy Legend

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Ok I planning on making a new forum/website/blog, ok I want a website with blog and forum, I can get by without website as I mainly want a blog and forum. So I wish to ask a few things, will be grateful to get any of the following questions answered please.


- What's a good host to use, when hosting my blog, forum, website or a combination of all three?
- What's the best forum software to use, free or paid for?
- Could someone explain most of the popular forum software, like phpBB, My(err what ever it's called), other popular forum software. Also if you can show me a forum with an example of the software type would like that please.?
- What's a good site to get a domain from please?
- Whats some good blog software or a good blogging site, that has some things like letting viewers leave feedback and able to vote on things.


Would also love any advice anyone has on starting such a project, just doing my 2 cents of research before diving in.
 
Host

Froghost, Hawkhost, Pluto Hosting, etc.

Software

PhpBB3 (Free) and vBulletin (Paid)

Domain

GoDaddy and NameCheap
 
Well Forum Promotion uses PhpBB3 if that's what you mean? 🙂
 
What's the best forum software to use, free or paid for?

In my opinion, phpBB is the best free software, and vBulletin being the best paid software.

Could someone explain most of the popular forum software, like phpBB, My(err what ever it's called), other popular forum software. Also if you can show me a forum with an example of the software type would like that please?

Forum Promotion uses phpBB, and as for vBulletin forum, check out The Admin Zone, which uses vBulletin version 3 or check out vBulletin Community Forum, which uses vBulletin version 4.

Whats some good blog software or a good blogging site, that has some things like letting viewers leave feedback and able to vote on things.

Try Wordpress or Joomla.
 
You should also give MyBB and SMF a shot at what you want and test-run all three free software with an open mind and try to install some mods/plugins that you might like. One thing a lot of guys here don't mention is SMO, which stands for social media optimization. You should really consider IPB 3, because of features like Facebook Connect and its strong integration with Facebook and Twitter. They work really, really well.

As for hosting, Hawkhost is good, but any host that has good reviews, is fast (enough), and has at least 99% uptime (give them a break, they sometimes have to do maintenance releases 😛) should do the job fine enough. I do not recommend servage.net (paid), 000webhost (free), or x10Hosting (free).

I get my domains these days from Netfirms.com. They offer $5.99 ($6.77 after some state's taxes) domains with free privacy after the DOLLARDOMAIN code is put in (the same code used to be used for $1 domains).
 
- What's a good host to use, when hosting my blog, forum, website or a combination of all three?
That's a personal choice, but generally, HawkHost are pretty good.

- What's the best forum software to use, free or paid for?
"To use" would probably be phpBB or IPB from experience.

- Could someone explain most of the popular forum software, like phpBB, My(err what ever it's called), other popular forum software.
The most successful boards listed at Big-Boards.com show that they use vBulletin, and Gaia Online (biggest) uses phpBB. "Popular" is hard to express as there are thousands of forums out there.

-Also if you can show me a forum with an example of the software type would like that please.?
MyBB; phpBB; vBulletin; IP. Board; SMF

- What's a good site to get a domain from please?
NameCheap (non-verified PayPal) and GoDaddy (verified PayPal + Credit card)

- Whats some good blog software or a good blogging site, that has some things like letting viewers leave feedback and able to vote on things.
Wordpress.org

How flexable is phpBB to customise to what I want?
It's hard, but if you start off with the most simplest design and add new features as you go along then it may be a bit easier. Depends what you want to customize: design, coding, features?
 
Wow thanks for all the hard work David, and El Cana, but David really that's bucket loads of info. Well what I want to setup is a creative blog/forum, give tips and guides on writing, designing, art, animation, and other similar things, as that is my area of expertise. What do you suggest for something like that, as I want a blog to showcase my guides and tips, and a forum for some feedback and to make an area for others to discuss such topics.
 
You could probably have a similar setup to FP, with a phpBB3 forum and a blog MOD for the blog. It's best to go with something you're used to, so I'm guessing you're probably used to FP, so phpBB. However, phpBB is a hassle when it comes to MODs (so logically, I should recommend MyBB, but I dislike MyBB's design of the U/M/ACP...), but I think it's worth it if you can set all that up successfully.
 
Well I would like the blog to be detailed not justa list of entries. I want to be able to put all of my blogs into a contents with links to blogs, header up top so on so forth, can I do that with phpbb mod?
 
Loopy Legend said:
Wow thanks for all the hard work David, and El Cana, but David really that's bucket loads of info. Well what I want to setup is a creative blog/forum, give tips and guides on writing, designing, art, animation, and other similar things, as that is my area of expertise. What do you suggest for something like that, as I want a blog to showcase my guides and tips, and a forum for some feedback and to make an area for others to discuss such topics.
Click to expand...

Seems like any forum software would work for your case, to be honest. If you want a blog, you could do what FP does, or you could always bridge something like Wordpress with the forum software you choose (every forum software has it).
 
I've actually been a long time user of activeboard http://activeboard.com.

They launched a free blog product called blogbaker http://blogbaker.com and added a universal login feature. This allows my users to register on my forum or blog, and have an account on both.

Sounds like this universal log in feature may be useful to you.
 
Yes, you can sign up for one, two... or many Activeboards.. one, two or many blogbaker blogs. Your users will only have to login to one! =) it's that easy
 
- JustHost.com
- phpBB3
- phpBB is the best to use, very user friendly, very appealing and does the job very efficiently as well, here is an example.
- You should get everything such as hosting, domain etc from JustHost.com.
- As far as I know the best blogging software is Wordpress

I may be interested but it depends what it involves and all.
 
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