Making a forum

[Nausilus^^]

I'm in the process of starting up my old guild again, and for that I'm gonna need a new forum. Old one was at guildportal.com, but I just hate the interface there.

Does anyone know any place I where it's possible to make a semi-fancy forum that covers the basics?

 

[Alan]

If your just after some forums, then http://www.forumsplace.com/ will provide you with free phpBB forums, which is an ok system.

Other alternative would be to buy some hosting and a vBulletin licence

 

[Awarkle]

www.kindred-spirit-prydwen.co.uk

just buy some webspace which allows you to have databases and host your own freebie forum i used MD-Pro which is easy to get installed and set up.

 

[Sentimos]

Buy some hosting and a cheap domain and get IPB not VB its too costy imo. And IPB is just as good if not better and you can get free great custom skins.

 

[Esselinithia]

IPB lacks a lot of key features that vBulletin has, and vBulletin 3.5 has some new extras as well. But lets go down in the costs, why would you pay for anything (domain, hosting, licences) when many many daoc players already have a hosting plan, and can give you hosting for free with a subdomain and of course you can still use free software for forum, and can switch to a better (comercial) one when you need it?

 

[Sentimos]

IPB lacks a lot of key features that vBulletin has, and vBulletin 3.5 has some new extras as well. But lets go down in the costs, why would you pay for anything (domain, hosting, licences) when many many daoc players already have a hosting plan, and can give you hosting for free with a subdomain and of course you can still use free software for forum, and can switch to a better (comercial) one when you need it?

I'd rather miss a few features which you probbly won't use anyway for £100 ty and even more on skins.

 

[Esselinithia]

Skins you can get for free, and can make more So no need to pay anything for the skins

 

[Penguin]

You could get free forums with easy setup from somewhere like www.invisionfree.com - Things like that often require adverts though. You could get some cheap hosting with PHP and MySQL support and host your own. There are plenty of free forum software around - They may not be as "good" as say IPB but you say you just want forums, so not extras such as an arcade etc.?

I use www.freepgs.com - One off payment of $3 (Around £1.70) gets you 75MB storage, MySQL, PHP, FTP and now unlimited bandwidth. You can upgrade too.

Setting up your own forums is usually quite easy, but can take a little time. For the actual forums you could look at free ones such as PHPBB, MYBB or Simple Machine Forums.

Personally i prefer MYBB - PHPBB is widely used though. SMF has a very good admin system.

Hope it helps,

Penguin.

 

[GReaper]

The 3 alternative Prydwen communities all offer free forums for guilds as well. Theres prydwen.co.uk (Albion), pryd.net (Hibernia) and prydwen.se (Midgard), all are totally advert free (though .se and .net ask for donations).

Using one of these forums has the advantage that some of your members might already be registered with them, as well as saving you the hassle of the admin side of keeping your forums updated. Only minor downside is that you don't admin them, however they're all free.

I'd happily host Excalibur/Albion guilds on prydwen.co.uk with clustering coming soon, I'm sure the admins of the other two forums might do the same with their respective realms for Excalibur.