[Shawn Gossman]

Why should I start an online forum community? There are many reasons to start one. One reason is to build a community of participants and eventually make friends and even your own little online family. Another reason is to build great leadership and your own mini-empire like community. It is just like being president of your own country, your choices can affect each and every moment and structure of a discussion forum.

This is one of many blogs in a series that will be posted on Starting your own online forum community. In this blog, we will look at the 4 types of forum software establishments to choose from. Please enjoy this blog and show your support by giving a comment or two.

Free-Host Forums

This kind of forum is remotely hosted on a different server. It is the ideal community for those under 18 years of age who can not purchase their own webhosting or software or for others who can not purchase these things. You can get free hosting for free (obviously) and usually have a pretty short subdomain or directory link for your forum. One great free hosting service with many great features and fast servers is Pro Boards. The downfall to this sort of feature is that most forum hosts are supported by advertisements whether they be static ads or popups. Another downfall is if one day you wish to move to a web-hosted software, most free-hosting services do not allow you to transfer your forum. You may have to start over from scratch and many members may not like the idea and start over again by your side.

Free Forum Software

This is probally the best route to go if you have your own webspace and domain name. You can get cheap webhosting from DreamHost Hosting and even register a domain for free as well. Most every forum out there is ran by a free forum software and free forum softwares are secure and come with many features. Another great feature is the ability to add new modifications or items that enhance the features of your bulletin board community including extra security and new themes (the look of your forum). A great free forum software to choose is MyBB Software, free with great support. There is not really any downfall for this kind of forum feature because even if you decide to buy a software, you usually can merge/convert your current content over to the new one.

Paid Forum Software

A paid forum software (which sometimes does not include copyright information) is great for business and hardcore forum communities. The great thing about most paid software is the support you get, most of the support is more professional and quicker because peoples money is involved. A great paid software that is commonly used is vBulletin. Most paid software forums offer great modifications (both free and paid) and even more features for the forum administrator and the user as well. The most recent paid forum software feature enhancement was by vBulletin with the use of social bookmarking and groups. The software has many features of a social network which is a good thing since social community activity is on the rise these days. There is really no downfall except with the price. Some paid forum softwares can cost a pretty penny but as most say are well worth it in the long run.

Your Own Forum Software

This would be a less common used method but its a good one at that. Build your own forum software from scratch whether it be asp, php or whatever. Building your own lets you control the features, copyright is your copyright and it helps build your forum software development skills. This could be more of a hobby than anything else and just maybe, maybe you can develop the next best free or paid forum software. That would be up to you. The only downfall is the time and energy it may take and the fact that YOU will be the support for the software.

So we went through the 4 main ways to start your own forum community. I would like to see some comments telling me what method you have used, how successful it has been and even share your forum’s link (as long as its non-adult or non-illegal) with us. Thank you for reading and expect more of these articles from me in time.

Shawn J. Gossman / The Webmaster Network Blog

[Cliff]

Nice Article, I'm all about vBulletin, totally worth the price with all the great mods you can get for it.

[Moelman]

Great article Shawn! I am with Cliff on choosing software, vBulletin is where it's at for me. But it really depends on your situation, some people do not want to shell out for vB or IPB or other just prefer free software. However I think any webmaster aspiring for success should pay for their hosting and domain instead of using free hosts like invisionfree. I guess it just depends on what your goals for your site are.

[Shawn Gossman]

I like MyBB but I also have a vBulletin forum (which I am not allowed to link here ) but am thinking of purchasing another one for TWNet, I am unsure yet.

I am currently developing a forum software as well, and let me say, it is a work out LOL