I'm looking at setting up my forum and like the set out and community page. Is it easy to do and is the software free?

Generally no its not free, depends on who you choose for your forum.. Long list of forum software to chose from.

Plenty of free forums with portal pages to choose from.

 

Look at 'phpbb' to get started. You run xampp to turn your local computer into a webhost and then you do all your testing from there.

 

The hosting, if you do put it online, is not free. And it varies.

 

You could, though, run your forum from your home IP with a bit of technical know-how but it would be slow (depending on your connection).

Guys, guys - you are confusing the poor fellow!

 

I just setup a test site on www.freehostia.com - its free hosting and its pretty good. While I was looking around just now, I found a great site (I wish I had seen it before) - http://www.free-webhosts.com/free-hosts.php

 

 

Thats just a place for your website to live. For the actual software, look for Open Source software (its pretty much all free) to run your website, there are 1000's of 'content management systems' or CMS's. This site allows you to demo different software before you try to install - http://opensourcecms.com/.

 

If you've got any questions, I'd be happy to help out.

I'm looking at setting up my forum and like the set out and community page. Is it easy to do and is the software free?

 

The software bigd uses is not free. It's not that easy to set up unless you have un understanding of html/webdesign/programming - this is going from the headaches darth and jim had to deal with when we switched from the old forum software.

 

There are however many similar types of software that are free.

omg they paid for this forum software :O

 

i hate this forum software, the PM module is painfull. the way you want to see a new post is rediculous, you need to go to the start then the last page.

 

check out http://www.sinners.net.au/news.php

 

sinners can see ladder results and next challenges as linked from gamearena, we have an rwar module for wars and signups, we didnt bother with teh teamspeak module tho, but its easy to add things in.

 

if you like it i can ask our resident web geek to hook you up with the relevent links to where u can find the software.

Edited July 2, 200818 yr by M49NUM

vBulletin costs money, yes.

 

It is a bit finicky, but it can be done very well and made to look pretty professional.

You can do all the same things they have done here at BigD by using phpBB3 and a portal mod

I found this very good

 

http://www.freeforums.org

what sort of forum are you starting?

You can do all the same things they have done here at BigD by using phpBB3 and a portal mod

 

Has phpbb fixed the issues where every morning there has been a new bot signed up and posted 10 different threads about buying mobile phones?

I like phpBB, mainly because of the games feature.

vBulletin can do everything phpbb can do and do it better. A games arcade can be added to this forum, but do you want people sitting on the forums playing flash games all day or do you want people in the servers to shoot at?

this forum needs an automated TMR submission page..

 

like here

http://games.internode.on.net/page.php?page=appeals&method=submit

 

or here

 

http://www.sinners.net.au/tmr.php

just send a PM to one of the people in the Sky... some call them the admin

Code it and it could be done .

omg they paid for this forum software :O

 

i hate this forum software, the PM module is painfull. the way you want to see a new post is rediculous, you need to go to the start then the last page.

 

 

Isnt there a setting in your PM so you can view last post first?

Isnt there a setting in your PM so you can view last post first?

 

http://www.bigdgaming.net/images/buttons/lastpost.gif

 

If you click that button you go to the last post of the thread. I think that is what he is talking about. Or didn't know about...

http://www.bigdgaming.net/images/buttons/firstnew.gif for new posts. Or just go to http://www.bigdgaming.net/search.php?do=getnew

 

vBulletin is one of the better pieces of forum software I have seen.

He means when you open a thread, you have to click to open, then click to go to last page. If you hit the >> button it just goes straight there.

Since Vbulletin is paid for, does that mean you can edit the source as much as you like?

 

^^ That was badly worded... does it impose any design/coding restrictions?

I know there's custom hacks for it, and if there's custom hacks, I'm sure you can make your own if you have the knowledge.

Since Vbulletin is paid for, does that mean you can edit the source as much as you like?

 

^^ That was badly worded... does it impose any design/coding restrictions?

 

You can modify it all you want, as far as I am aware.

 

There are tonnes of downloadable addons for it that are made by members of the vbulletin community (vbulletin.org). There are also "signed" hacks that are supported by the creators which can be found at vbulletin.com.

Yes, vBulletin is one of the best, but it's NOT free.

 

He is better off playing with phpbb and then deciding on whether or not paying for forum software is the right idea.

 

There are plenty of custom mods for phpbb including extra security for bot rejection.

it will utimately conme down to person preference.

 

PHPbb is a good starting point - its what these forums started on and is pretty easy to use. The community just out grew it and we needed more functionality.

 

Vbulliten is highly configerable but if you think the front end isd hard to navigate then dont look under the hood.

 

sending PMs is quite simple - either go into your "user cp" and create new message or if you are in a post click of the persons name and select from there.

 

Most CMS's end up doing the same sorts of thing and then it comes down to how much you want to fiddle to make it look good and add things.

 

Have fun playing and dont be affraid to ask questions.

 

Also - if you are using a free web hostage site then look carefully at what they call reasonable use. Most will allow you to have some traffic but if the download useage gets too large they get upset.

Yeah i had a look and played with phpbb, but can i make a starting page like the bigD one where it has the recent post list, calender, server details, count down timers and all that extra stuff.

 

Maybe i just need to play around with it a bit more.

 

It's for a trip i am planning to take and seeing whether using a forum to hold information is a good idea, as long as you have the internet on a computer u can get at the information, instead, if i had an access database i would need to install reader and editor programs and of course not lose my usb drive.