cheapest way to set up our local town's and villages

searcher30

chat forum...any ideas appreciated. thanks in advance.

Flexible_Friend

In my opinion this is the best forum software on the market but it costs £91.

http://www.vbulletin.com/

This is what this website (MSE) uses.

However, if you want a cheaper, free forum you can try phpBB

http://www.phpbb.com/

If you already have a web host and you use cPanel/Fantasico as your control panel, you will probably get a script on there to install phpBB without much fuss.

Remember your web host must be running PHP for the software to work and you will need one MySql database. Check your hosting package.

I'm assuming you have a web host and a domain name.

If not, for web hosting try ...

http://www.dataflame.co.uk/

A basic £2.99 or £4.99 a month package from dataflame should suffice.

And for domain names try ....

http://www.123-reg.co.uk/

or

http://www.ukreg.com/

Hope this helps.

amcluesent

Yahoo Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/start)?

I expect Google has something similar.