Thread: Forums

You can buy a licence of the Vbulletin software from Jelsoft Enterprioses, see bottom of each screen.

Once done that all you need is to modify it as appropriate and getting a sewrver to host it.


Peter.

Depending on the hosting service you have (or will have), they may already provide some soft of forum/bulletin board software - mine does.
As sturdee pointed out, you can buy the software that this forum runs on for a modest fee (about $US200 from memory).

phpBB is the leading open source bulletin board software - millions of instances of it running; download for free from here. It's robust (largest user is the Gaia online community, with 16 million members and 1.4 billion posts) and quite tweakable.

You'll need a web host that supports php scripting, but that's not uncommon (this forum is a php based one, too).

Check with whatever company will be hosting your site; they may already have recommendations for bulletin board software.

Originally Posted by Mini

What is involved in setting up a forum and do I have to be geeky to do it. It would only be realitively small compared to this one so would it take a lot of maintenance? Thanks.

How did your forum work out Chris?

I need to set one up so I'm looking for tips & hints etc.

Sorry Bob, I can't help. It was a passing thought but to be honest I have to much to do already so the idea got binned. If I was to do it one thing would be mandatory, no user names ala Sawmill Creek, I think the forum then becomes self policing to some extent. I am a member of two fora that are set up that way, one possibly bigger than this one and the need to police it appears to be less IMHO. I know of one individual who on a forum with user names is a complete idiot abusing people etc, but on another where his real name is used he is completely different. Fair enough the mods are there to police these things but it should not happen in the first place. Doubtless others would disagree.

Short of demanding photo ID from members, there is no way of ensuring that people actually give their real name to forums which require you to do so. I believe there are some members of this forum who use pseudonyms on Sawmill Creek.

Rocker

Point taken and you would have to be naive to think otherwise. Why would they not use their real names? Have they got something to hide? They must surely be paranoid to worry about that.

Originally Posted by Mini

Point taken and you would have to be naive to think otherwise. Why would they not use their real names? Have they got something to hide? They must surely be paranoid to worry about that.

I have joined a forum (that you could not lurk on and required real names) with a fake name, just to watch a particularly entertaining FIG JAM that I did not want to know I had joined. Within several months he had annoyed enough people that he got kicked of that forum and I then gave it up.

I also joined that very well known American woodworkers forum with my real name and found that no one listened and everyone just wanted to talk - "enough about me talking about myself, now what do you know about me" - sort of stuff. So I joined with another name and at least was able to talk to myself - but I gave that one up as well.

Originally Posted by BobL

So I joined with another name and at least was able to talk to myself - but I gave that one up as well.

At least that would have been an intelligent conversation, worth joining for just to read that.


Peter.

and if you insulted yourself you'd really have to take notice

Originally Posted by echnidna

and if you insulted yourself you'd really have to take notice

Yeah it really messed me around, after a while I found it harder and harder to work out which was my real persona?

Originally Posted by BobL

Yeah it really messed me around, after a while I found it harder and harder to work out which was my real persona?

So that's why you gave up on that forum, couldn't handle your multiple persona anymore.


Peter.

I recently set up am now running phpBB3. It took about 3-4 hours all told, with stuffing around and trying to learn about it. I also had to set it up on my NAS box which is linux based, plus install sql server. I found a faq to follow for the install and used that, it got me up and running.

It has a ton of features and you can require proper names etc. Also, you can demand no entry until the admin or mods reply with an email; so close control can be kept if needed.

Regarding the maintenance, not sure, but you do need to keep an eye open for spammers and the occasional weirdo who will post weird stuff. That applies to any BB though, not just phpBB.

I think The Pen Shop forum (US) runs on that as well, seems to work OK, but not as fully featured as vBulletin IMHO.