What does it take to make & run a forum?

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Matak

Out of the blue!
Jun 18, 2002
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Near Toronto
I was thinking about how usefull a forum is for the exchange of information and the bonding of a community. I thought it could be terrific for our company which is basically an association of about 30 to 50 dealers spread out over North America. We are in a new industry so the sharing of information could really be beneficial to our company.

So, I would like to ask any of you who have had experience in this, what is involved in starting and running a forum? What does VBB cost to run? Is VBB the best choice for a very small membership? What sort of bandwidth is necessary for a small sized forum? Is the programing and implementation hard to learn? Am I biting off more than I can chew?

My guess is that we would get about 30 - 70 members with about a couple of hundred posts a week, but it might get picture heavy.
 
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FL Knifemaker

Arming the Free World
Oct 20, 2004
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Central FL
Several knifemakers have forums off their websites. I know it's not really that expensive or difficult to set up and run a small one. If you want to talk the the guy that hosts my site and is familiar with the process, let me know.
 

slipknottin

the original legend
Jan 13, 2002
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You can get open source or other inexpensive (or free) forum software. Then all you would need to pay for is hosting. There is a huge variety of hosting options so its somewhat difficult to give you an accurate measure of what youll likely be paying. Heck if youve got a decent internet connection you could put together a server and run it right out of your house.

Once the original setup is done, it wont require much maintance at all. Even larger sites like this one dont require much in the way of work.
 

Matak

Out of the blue!
Jun 18, 2002
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Near Toronto
FL Knifemaker said:
Several knifemakers have forums off their websites. I know it's not really that expensive or difficult to set up and run a small one. If you want to talk the the guy that hosts my site and is familiar with the process, let me know.
Could you give me the address of a smaller one so I could get the feel of it?

Slip, I might just run it from here. Is there much of a learning curve to the software?

Well Kas, I'm not too bright but if I put my mind to it I can usually get by pretty good.

BTW guys I am overwhelmed & please by the quick responses :) cheers!
 

slipknottin

the original legend
Jan 13, 2002
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Matak said:
Slip, I might just run it from here. Is there much of a learning curve to the software?
Software like Vb is relatively simple to learn. I havent played with very many other forum software, but I imagine they are pretty similar.

Personally, I find HTML to be more difficult than Vb. (not that either one is that difficult, but Vb has a somewhat standard format/template, HTML does not)
 

ScottoMacD

Charlie and Amanda's Daddy
Dec 21, 2001
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Vaudreuil-Dorion, Quebec, Canada
I am the Admin and mod of this site right now

http://forum.qmfl.org/phpbb/

It is for the Football league that I coach in.
They don't pay that much for the site. The design was done by someone else but from what I am told and from looking in the admin page is not very complex.

Right now because we don't have many people registered it is not too bad but I can see it becoming more of a handful when it starts to pick up when the season nears and the kids get the rivalries going.

I can't imagine admining and moding a site like AC with 10000+ people or even 1000 for that matter.

Overall from my stand point it is quite little work. I just have to keep the animals in line. Nothing like a site loaded with huge egoed 16 and 17 year old football players.
 

slipknottin

the original legend
Jan 13, 2002
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ScottoMacD said:
I can't imagine admining and moding a site like AC with 10000+ people or even 1000 for that matter.
So do like they do here. Give out the moderating task to a bunch of people so you dont have to do it yourself. :joke:
 
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