Hey everyone,

As this is my first post, I'll introduce myself quickly. My name is Eli, I live in Brooklyn, and I'm a recent college grad. I'm working for a non-profit called Student World Assembly. We're an international democratic assembly of students, who form chapters all over the world, debate pressing global issues, and take action on these issues in the form of raising awareness, educating the public, lobbying their governments, etc. Although we're only about 4 years old, we've managed to expand rapidly around the world, boasting over 14,000 members and active chapters in places as diverse as Ghana and Pakistan. Check us out at www.studentworldassembly.org

We have a discussion forum on our website that is miserably out of date. Although there was a lot of activity at the outset, it has since died down almost completely. Since we pride ourselves on encouraging dialogue among students around the world, it is imperative that we not only have an active discussion forum, but one that is up to date. I have very little experience in this area, but I've been doing some preliminary research.

Right now the software we're using is webcrossing. We pay about $60 a month for this and as far as I'm concerned this is a complete waste of money for what we're getting. So I have a few questions that hopefully some of you will be able to help with.

1) What is the level of difficulty of setting up and maintaining forums using free software such as php? We have no full time IT staff so this work would have to be performed by a novice and/or someone with very little time to commit to this project.

2) It seems from what I've read that vBulletin is the most popular paid software. How much help will they provide with set-up and maintenance of our forum? One of the biggest problems with webcrossing is that they charge $70/hr for assistance. Does vBulletin have a similar policy?

3) If we change our software, is there any way to load all of the previous discussions into the new forum?

4) Is there any software that would allow users to translate the forum into their own languages? I know that none of the translation software is perfect, but for the forum to be truly representative of the world (as much as possible with the limited internet access in certain countries) the discussion should not be limited to English speakers.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read (and hopefully reply to) this, and I apologize if I posted in the wrong section.

Hey there

Not difficult at all. Check out phpBB • Creating Communities Worldwide for a good free - reliable forum software used worldwide. The software comes with good documentation and you can find excellent support for the platform all over the net.

With vBulletin - although dont quote me on this one as im not a user - you pay a liscencing fee per year - and you do the rest yourself. However you can pay for them to install your board; and i believe provide any maintenance?

Yes. Depending on the software - if you go to the site you will often find instructions. For example SMF --> phpBB or phpBB --> vBulliten. Even if you dont find anything - just post on their forums and im sure theyd be glad to help

Most forums come with language options - alls you have to do is download a language pack from the product creator (eg phpBB • Languages ) and install them to your board.


Hope that helps!

I work for Web Crossing, and I'm sorry to learn that Eli123 is unsatisified - we would like to make that right and I hope Eli123 will get in touch with me. In fact, Web Crossing technical support is free, although we do charge for customizations and not all pricing plans include telephone support. Because of its flexibility Web Crossing does have a learning curve and we offer free telephone training to help bring new administrators up to speed.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Jamesgilfoyle, your reply was definitely very helpful. I'll be sure to check into all of that.

MichaelKrieg, thanks for your offer to help. I've seen on the Web Crossing website that your discussion forum software looks professional and modern. Unfortunately, whatever version of it that we are using is nothing like this, and we simply do not have the resources to continue to pay for an inadequate, outdated service. However, I'll send you a private message to see if we can work out the problems and get our forum to look and function the way we need without changing software.

Anytime Let me know if you need any more advice