What is the best Forum to use?

judderman62

thank you for your informative and concise explanation :beer::T

btw I had never set up and run a forum before so I was somewhat terrified - but once you get into it - it's not too difficult - though I find some terminology for some functions a tad unclear.

Invision also have a help forum - so if you get stuck, have questions etc you can ask there

hope this helps

Judders

judderman62

Keldin you seem well informed in this area, may I just ask a quick question (sorry to temporarily hijack the OP's thread).

As you mention with option 1 there are clearly limits as it is a free service.

I ahve wondered do we admins have to prune some posts as time goes on or do posts just disappear as limits are reached ?

thanks

J

fermi

Keldin wrote: »

It depends on what the OP wants but I assumed he was looking at the 2nd option and hosting it himself. In that case i would say phpbb as its free and has community provided mods and support. And later he could move to a paid version.

Totally agree with that.

The phpbb site and it's community forum is amazing in it's level and depth of help/support. And it's free.

www.phpbb.com

Keldin

judderman62 wrote: »

Keldin you seem well informed in this area, may I just ask a quick question (sorry to temporarily hijack the OP's thread).

As you mention with option 1 there are clearly limits as it is a free service.

I ahve wondered do we admins have to prune some posts as time goes on or do posts just disappear as limits are reached ?

thanks

J

You can prune the forum yourself manually. phpbb calls it pruning but other boards may refer to it as somethign else.:

Prune Forums
This will delete any topic which has not been posted to or viewed within the number of days you select. If you do not enter a number then all topics will be deleted. By default, it will not remove topics in which polls are still running nor will it remove stickies and announcements.

It should be possible to script this and they may do it on some free hosted boards but normally it is run manually by the admin of a private board.
The forum itself in terms of php or html pages isn't normally very large as it is the basic framework and the forum headings etc but will also include the attachements and avatars and images people post which can be extensive. The database can grow quite large as it is all the posts and the text contained therein.

K