Please Help.. I Need a host that has forums!

M

mestaykool

New member
Hello

I am new, and what a fantastic site this is, I read through a lot of the articles and all seem very helpful. (lol@ all the affiliate links being banned though, people just dont get it huh?)

Okay quick question

I want a website like this for next season basketball.

Cheap, but not at the expense of the site, i anticipate 100-200 members or so within the community.

Basically what I would like is a host that is relatively cheap where I can have the main page, and maybe one or two other pages, and then the forum. The forum is the bulk of the site. I want to be able to mod the forum etc and have the control panel etc

Any reccomendations

Basically I want this website here (HD) but with a front page.. is that possible?

Thank You! :)
 
Your requirements are in fact pretty easy to fulfill. The vast majority of hosts should be able host that.

Now, HD is based on a paid forum software (vBulletin), and it won't be distributed by hosts, but there's lots of quality free forum software out there. You can get a quick look at some of the more popular ones here: http://www.opensourcecms.com/

Most hosts will also be offering a tool like Fantastico, that allows easy installation of applications, including some forums, but personally, I recommend manual installs.

Among the free ones, I recommend SMF (SimpleMachines.org), as it comes with quite a few features out of the box.

You need to keep in mind though that the host only provides a platform to host your site, but won't be creating, running, customizing the site for you. Those are the jobs of other people: webmasters, designers, programmers.

EDIT: Always have a sufficiently recent backup of your site files and, most importantly, the forum's database.
 
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mestaykool, there are a lot of options out there. Virtually all hosts now offer some form of one click script installs which will include forum software.
You should look first for a quality host and make your decision based on that.

Even if that host does not offer control panel installations of software there are many great options out there.
For forum software I recommend SMF (http://www.simplemachines.org) which is in my opinion the best free forum software on the market.
 
mestaykool said:
Hello

I am new, and what a fantastic site this is, I read through a lot of the articles and all seem very helpful. (lol@ all the affiliate links being banned though, people just dont get it huh?)

Okay quick question

I want a website like this for next season basketball.

Cheap, but not at the expense of the site, i anticipate 100-200 members or so within the community.

Basically what I would like is a host that is relatively cheap where I can have the main page, and maybe one or two other pages, and then the forum. The forum is the bulk of the site. I want to be able to mod the forum etc and have the control panel etc

Any reccomendations

Basically I want this website here (HD) but with a front page.. is that possible?

Thank You! :)
Click to expand...
I'd find any host really, just do a review on one and try them out. Then get phpbb3 for free, it's very easy to install. There you have your forum, now you just need a homepage and there's many free CMS's out there, such as joomla, drupal and phpnuke. All that is for free + the cost of your hosting. I'd reccomend that bundle for a forum that's going to have roughly 300 members.

Good luck and feel free to ask more questions ;)
 
My personnal experiance with SMF is limited but hear its really good to use although im kinda a fan of phpBB ONLY because i find it easier to skinn and customize :)
 
Agreed, most any host has several. Personally I recommend SMF to newer forum administrators (the person who "runs" the forum) because of the easier updating & day-to-day maintenance (and a ton of free add-on with a click from their "package manager" thing for add-on features).
 
any decent host will fulfill your requirements. mostly, phpbb or other cms systems will be provided along with the hosting plan. fantastico is a nice utility to use for some great utilities.
 
I think most of the hosting accounts are inbuilt with your requirements. I am using cpanel-11 and In that there is an option called Fantastico(as artycrow said), which has all the options for your forums, and It has many inbuilt options for gallery and many other things. As you said you are going to use your site for a short period of time, you can use gellihost for free hosting, or there are number of hosting accounts available for a very reasonable price. You can choose any of them.
 
Almost all hosting accounts ship with some form of auto installer (usually fantastico or installatron)

If you did not want a free forum you could purchase IPB or VB both of which are good forum packages.
 
Now a days, according to what you listed, it is very easy to find a host that suits you. If you want to build a community, there are many software available such as VBulletin (Paid), IPB (Paid), PHPBB (Free), SMF (Free)... and the list goes on. Just a note that, if you are not sure how to manually install a forum, most host comes with Fantastico, which will automatically install it for you with a single click.

For the front page, there are many hacks/mods are available for download to users. It just need you to integrate it to your forum yourself with some minor adjustment with to codes.

MOD NOTE:Sentence removed. Participants may not post or otherwise transmit promotional materials, or any other form of solicitation, except in those forum sections where advertising is expressly permitted. We rely on your future cooperation. Thank you for your understanding.
 
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mestaykool said:
Hello

I am new, and what a fantastic site this is, I read through a lot of the articles and all seem very helpful. (lol@ all the affiliate links being banned though, people just dont get it huh?)

Okay quick question

I want a website like this for next season basketball.

Cheap, but not at the expense of the site, i anticipate 100-200 members or so within the community.

Basically what I would like is a host that is relatively cheap where I can have the main page, and maybe one or two other pages, and then the forum. The forum is the bulk of the site. I want to be able to mod the forum etc and have the control panel etc

Any reccomendations

Basically I want this website here (HD) but with a front page.. is that possible?

Thank You! :)
Click to expand...

is it possible? yes. Will you need a designer and a few hundred dollars? yes.

p.s.

You might want to consider a cheap, budget host to start with that doesn't oversell.
 
You just need a simple hosting account, i recommend <<REMOVED>>, as its quite cheap and easy to use.
For your forums you can download any free forums, eg phpbb.com
 
I was looking into forum software myself. I'm currently deciding between smf and vanilla. What are the pros/cons of each?

Thanks!
 
rsbenedict said:
I was looking into forum software myself. I'm currently deciding between smf and vanilla. What are the pros/cons of each?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Personally, I love Vanilla for its looks and to-the-point information flow. However, I think among most forums I've seen it is the least secure and has rather small developer force behind it. SMF is a much stronger and feature rich platform. However, it looks very "bulky" in my taste. The best application on the market is still vBulletin, but its not easy to afford for a leisure site.
 
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