Setting up a VBulletin forum

tiff

I would like to set up a Vbulletin forum but have no idea where to start. I know all about free forums but am not interested in free hosted forums. I also would need the forum to hopefully pay for itself with advertising but dont know how to go about this either. Then there is design.

Can anyone recommend a person/company that could help me with this?

heatherw_01

You need a MYSQL and PHP enabled web hosting. VBulletin costs over £100. You can use a free forum like www.phpbb.com and host this on the server. PHPBB is not hosted, you still need to install it on the server.

sra

You could ask at http://www.vbulletin-fans.com/
vbulletin.com and vbulletin.org are more geared to people who have a board already.

meclive

Go with a decent webhost and you should get cPanel so that phpBB will just be a 1-click install. As for advertising; once you have a website up-and-running you could start with placing google adsense or equivalent type of ads to gain a little revenue.

tiff

Thanks for the link SRA.

Its just that everyone and his dog seems to be switching to Vbulletin. I must admit I like VB features but I also want the site to be taken seriously and wondering if I use phpbb will it look out of date?

sra

tiff wrote:

I also want the site to be taken seriously and wondering if I use phpbb will it look out of date?

Have a look here:
http://www.big-boards.com/statistics/

vbulletin is way ahead in the biggest boards on the net.
If you want to charge your members for anything, vbulletin also has a built in manager for that
http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/main/subscriptions

ukbill69

I use https://www.session9.co.uk for my web hosting, £15 per year, domain names including .com £6.50 a year. Great support services. 30 day money back to!

budgetflyer

You could also place banner adds or text links that earn commission. see https://www.tradedoubler.co.uk for more info.

one of the more interesting looking forum type boards I've seen is http://www.geeklog.net/

To be honest, geeklog looks a bit too complicated for me but you can customise it with all different themes.
one live example is http://rrhosting.com/geeklog/

I bought life hosting from them for £2.89 on ebay. Have been very pleased with features and support provided. Its up to £4.99 now but amazing value as its a one off payment. http://search.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQsassZrrhostingQQhtZ-1
2 different forum scripts,chatroom script etc available via control panel etc