Hello all,

I am brand brand new to the world of forum admining. I have wanted to start my own forum for pet rat owners for quite some time (some of you saw my introduction). I have signed up with Excoboards as a start and have everything laid out. But...I have no idea how to properly modify the forum to look unique and personalized. Making graphics is easy, but the process to put them in place seems confusing. I am not a coder by any stretch of the mile, and it seems like the more personalized you want your board, the more code you have to know, etc. Exco is already being problematic..the admin controls are a pain..everytime you want to edit something a new window opens, so you have to keep closing them, etc etc. Bleh.

So, my base question is, can anyone help me with the code part of making a custom Exco board? I tried the skins they have, but they are not very striking, and there are only a handful of them. I'm not sure if I'm doing things right, but, I figure this is a good place to start

If the board does well over the next year or so, I may consider upgrading to something better. But, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, as I'm a fish out of water at the moment ^^;. Thank you for your help in advance!

Oh, one last question...is phpbb a better type of forum or should I stick with Excoboards? I'd rather not run a paid site right now, as this a big experiment as of right now. I saw some people hate phpbb, but I've seen a lot of forums that use it, and they've always been good forums. Any thoughts?

Well...I'm not sure that very many people use Excoboard. Unfortunately I can't give you any solid advice on modifying it since I've never used it, and you might have trouble finding somebody here who could do it either.

That said, if I were you, yes, I would switch...my personal favorites are SMF and MyBB for free software. You really should also get a paid host. They are very cheap and definitely worth it.

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Hi Ryan, thanks for the advice. Are SMF and MyBB actual forum 'languages', like phpbb? Sorry, I'm not up on the lingo yet either ^^;.

Also, any recs for a paid host for these? I found one phpbb one that is only 4.95 a month or so. I assume SMF and MyBB have similar hosts? I am reluctant to get a paid host right off the bat, because I am so new at this, and I'm not sure how successful my shot at a forum will be. But, if the SMF or MyBB looks good and is easy to get up and running I would consider it. Here's the one for phpbb:

http://www.siteground.com/phpbb-hosting.htm

One of my favorite forums is a phpbb one, and it's really customized and streamlined, with good mods, etc. However, after reading up on the phpbb forum here I'm not sure I want to try it ^^;. I'll take a look at the ones you suggested. Thank you again!

phpBB isn't terrible, but it's definitely not the best in my opinion. Don't take my word for it...I'd do plenty of reading and asking around to get a majority opinion before you make any final decisions.

Regarding the host - any webhost will be able to run most forums...it doesn't have to be one "especially made" for phpBB. Be sure to read the fine lines between the host that you linked to. It's not just $4.95/month...it's $4.95/month if you pay for 2 years up front - I would not recommend doing that under any circumstances. I rarely even recommend paying for 1 year up front.

Again, do your research on hosts as well...because there are plenty of good, and plenty of bad ones...I will say that one I have had great success with in the past was www.site5.com

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I just got done reading about both MyBB and SMF, and both of them look great! Sayonara Excoboards (which is too bad, cause I just got done laying out all my forums and subforums there >_< I knew I should have read up some more...

Both of these options seems really comparable. Does anyone here have any complaints/praises that set either of them apart from eachother?

One of my favorite forums uses phpbb, and the site is nicely laid out, great mods, lots of customization, etc. But, again, I am a code moron...making bold text in html is pretty much the extent of my knowledge there @_@. So far it looks like MyBB might be the way to go. I really like their layout. I'll look some more about both before deciding. I'll also check out site5 for hosting. Thanks again for the help!

SMF is a reasonably good piece of software smalltownrats. Just becareful of the hacks you install, especially the CAPTCHA code (the one that adds a set of numbers to prevent automated sign ups). It crashed my test forum,lol.

phpBB is a little too large around the waist for me. I believe an Admin has enough to do without manually going through all the codes in your forum to install a hack. And their easymod refuses scripts half the time.

So go with SMF...

Is SMF better than MyBB? The two seem really comparable, and being a newbie at this, I don't know much to compare them by, so I'd probably be happy with either of them ^^ I'll do some more reading and hopefully I can pick one by the end of the day today.

I'd like to customize the board with my own graphics, are either SMF or MyBB easier to do that with? So far my attempts at customizing my Excoboard have failed miserably, haha. Thanks Anon.

SMF is pretty customisable, but I believe MyBB is a lot easier to do so, and I've seen some great MyBB sites out there. It all boils down to how much coding you know...and if you're like me, which I think you said you can manage do type bold in html? then you'll have to flip a coin. SMF is still pretty new compared to phpBB etc, so not much exists and most of the hacks, customisation goes with the default skin only, so if you can manage to change colours easily then you shouldn't have much of a problem.

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