Website & Forum. After Domain Registration, What is next?

[Webster]

Hello my dear friends,

I spent lots of my times on the internet, and i do have some idea in my minds - to establish my own interest website & forum.

I have few concept in my mind, & i have actually registered the domain names at exabytes.

What i wanted to do is a website and a forum, both different thing.

What is my next step? Any advice? Really wanted to plan properly & then start get things move on, step by step.

Thanks a lot in advance & it is great to have a forum like this.

ooops! should be --->

[sampride]

After you've registered your domain name, your need a space to host your forum or website. You need to plan the website/forum's space and bandwidth properly so that you do not overuse by the end of month.

Forum script has paid and free script. You can try free script first, then only migrate to paid script like vBB or IPB later.

[robot]

initial website development usually wouldn't have problem with the space or bandwidth limit given. u can alway switch to a better package to cater these usage.
do have a good plan on what you wanted to do. it require lots of effort and commitment to make a great website

[fivio]

Dear Webster,

It is great to build your own community.
There are few things to be highlighted before you want to do forum hosting.

1. Select reliable webhosting provider. Never check space/price ratio aspect only. Check the overall performance of the hosting company. Can they take load of a forum ? Can they really deliver the claimed they give.

2. Check also the track record of the hosting company. Do they ever hosted forums ? Like exabytes hosts webmastermalaysia.com, wnshosting.com hosts bincang.net, etc.

3. Read the TOS of the webhoster. Because sometime, they will force you to upgrade to dedicated servers if you use X % of CPU and X % of RAM. Try to be more skeptism in selecting the hosting. You deserve the best for your needs.

4. Purchase the hosting ^_^.

------

After you installa everything, voila, you are ready to go.

1. Please do not SPAM all over the place in the other forums about your forum.
2. Inviute close friends and relative to join in your community. From there it all starts
3. Do backup always
4. Make sure you have the posession of your domain. Not the webhoster.
5. Did I already mention backup ?
6. Backup selalu
7. Jangan lupa backup
8. Be active in the forum.

Hope this will help in your venture :P

Thank you,

[michaelfoo]

Hi,

1. Select reliable webhosting provider. Never check space/price ratio aspect only. Check the overall performance of the hosting company. Can they take load of a forum ? Can they really deliver the claimed they give.

I second this statement. Imagine after all your hard work to build the forum and it finally gets the attention, a few terrible downtime makes your forum inaccessible and finally your members got fed up and leave your forum. It is a big pain.

Never, never focus on super cheap pricing if you're hosting a forum. Reliability is what you should go for!

Thanks.

[chris79]

Originally Posted by michaelfoo

Hi,


I second this statement. Imagine after all your hard work to build the forum and it finally gets the attention, a few terrible downtime makes your forum inaccessible and finally your members got fed up and leave your forum. It is a big pain.

Never, never focus on super cheap pricing if you're hosting a forum. Reliability is what you should go for!

Thanks.

Thanks for the advice, Michael.
You reminded me. Cheers

[michaelfoo]

Originally Posted by chris79

Thanks for the advice, Michael.
You reminded me. Cheers

Hi Chris,
You're welcome

Good luck to all of you!

[Webster]

Thanks a lot for all the advice, it really really enlighten me a lo0Ot!

Please do continue your comments here, you can even criticise me if i've said any lousy things, i really willing to learn.

Wish to know, since i'm new for the forum thing, i've some very light / basic / surface experience in handling forum only, should i start with a free script first? Or it is better to start with a paid script?

Thanks.

[michaelfoo]

Hi Webster,
What script are you looking for? If you can get a free script, why not? By all means, go for the free ones. The reason is because the free ones are usually open source script, that you can customise the script to suit your needs.

Paid scripts on the other hand, the good thing is any bugs will be fixed promptly by the developer. However, these scripts are usually encoded that you cannot simply modify them.

Please do not hesitate to ask again if you have any queries!

Hope that helps

[Webster]

Forum free script. I've heard that phbpp is one of the best? Any comment / recommendation? And someone actually told me that there are actually hosting company which offer a function to install phbpp forum automatically juz a click on it, rather than manually install it to the web server? Is that true?

Any hosting company offer such service? Since i asked, hopefully not considered self-advertise if you answer me kua..

[robot]

most paid hosting provide script library where u can install the script with just a few simple steps. there are a few forums script for your choice and phpbb is one of them.
do check out the hosting package whether it include those programs

[michaelfoo]

Forum free script. I've heard that phbpp is one of the best? Any comment / recommendation? And someone actually told me that there are actually hosting company which offer a function to install phbpp forum automatically juz a click on it, rather than manually install it to the web server? Is that true?
Yes, you can do that with Fantastico (cPanel server) or Installtron (Directadmin server)

Yes, phpBB is one of the best free forum

Thanks

[fivio]

Hie,

PHPBB indeed is the best free forum, provided you patch it well and put some modification.

However, if you do want some other alternative, you should also conside Simple Machine : Simple Machines - Home of SMF: Free PHP and MySQL forum software

Directadmin and Cpanel do have AUTOMATIC script installation. But you must check whether the hoster provided the system or not.

Directadmin ---> Installatron
Cpanel ---> Fantastisco

Both works well.

However, if you interested to purchase forum script. I recomend you

vBulletin
CommunityServer

Both of this have superb interface and forum system.

But I would suggest you to go for FREE alternative. When your community grow larger, you can always MIGRATE your data to a different forum system.

Hope this will help.

Thank you,

[michaelfoo]

Just add on more information


Quoted from fivio's post:
However, if you interested to purchase forum script. I recomend you

vBulletin
CommunityServer

Both of this have superb interface and forum system.
Do consider Invision Board. I like it very much

But I would suggest you to go for FREE alternative. When your community grow larger, you can always MIGRATE your data to a different forum system.
Agree with you! Most paid forums have the conversion to help you convert from many free forums to theirs!

Thanks!