Hello all.
I'm new here.

I've been trying to research how to have a banner/pop-up free forum on my site. I'm having a very difficult time finding information. If anyone might have any suggestions I'd be grateful. thank you for your time.

mole:confused:

Some sites that may be of interest to you:

http://www.ibforums.com/
http://www.phpbb.com/
http://www.xmbforum.com/
http://www.iansoft.net/
http://www.ikonboard.com/
http://www.vbulletin.com/

Well if you have a remotely hosted board, you're likely to have popups unless you pay to have them removed ala EZboard. Ikonboard (http://www.ikonboard.com) I think just started a new remotely hosted version of their board which I think is popup free. Otherwise you'll need to install a preferably PHP forum to your site. (xmbforum, phpbb)

There seem to be a lot of problems with hosting a forum anywhere if it gets popular at all. What exactly is it that causes the problems? Is it too many messages? Too many people there at the same time? Other stuff? All of the above?

When should someone start to be concerned about a forum? Are there some max amounts of anything to be looking for?

If your forum gets crowded you will probably need more space MBs and Bandwidth per month.

Originally posted by Hiccups
There seem to be a lot of problems with hosting a forum anywhere if it gets popular at all. What exactly is it that causes the problems? Is it too many messages? Too many people there at the same time? Other stuff? All of the above?

When should someone start to be concerned about a forum? Are there some max amounts of anything to be looking for?

For me I am running my own vB forum at forums.sanguo-online.com and I do have around 15-20 active user everyday, but I used only about 1-2GB of bandwidth every month.

I am under the impression that it is not just bandwidth and space used for it that causes problems though. That's what I am trying to find out.

There is always the CPU resource heavy forums poorly coded in PERL and using flat-file DB's... just use a PHP/mySQL one and you should be alright.

An XMB forum should not cause any big problems then? :)

also try

www.invisionboard.com

Originally posted by Hiccups
There seem to be a lot of problems with hosting a forum anywhere if it gets popular at all. What exactly is it that causes the problems? Is it too many messages? Too many people there at the same time? Other stuff? All of the above?

When should someone start to be concerned about a forum? Are there some max amounts of anything to be looking for?

For PERL/CGI flatfile based forum, most of them are banned by webhost because they used too much CPU resources.

For PHP/SQL based forum, the problem is on the MySQL concurrent connections. Most host set a limit on these and it limits your forum the amount of user that CAN be online at the same time. This pose a problem when your forum traffic are spiky. If your forum has around 30 user most of the time, this should not be a problem.

Just curious. Is it a Conan O'Brien fan site? I am asking because I know he did a Molecular Man skit on SNL a few months ago. I wanted to register the molecularman.com domain name just for kicks (it was available for a while), but then some band snatched it.

We have just isntalled phpbb and it works great. No problems and a good looking free BB.

i've been using phpBB for quite a while and it's pretty good.

There were some problems with changing the size of the text in some sections, but I think that has since been fixed.

no, not a conan site. I'm going to be helping out with my fiance's site. he's writing some stuff with maxmsp and composing music, so i'm going to try to take care of web development, tech support for his apps, and moderating a forum and a few other things. That skit is where my handle came from though.

1. Select a platform that you are comfortable with. Whether that is LINUX/PHP/mySQL or Windows/ASP/Access (or SQL Server) is up to you. If you go the PHP route, I am sure that everyone will tell you to use the vBulletin software package. This forum is run on vBulletin. The vBulletin lite version is free, but it sucks. If you go with ASP, I would recommend snitz (www.snitz.com), although you have to be on the ball about applying updates to it (there are some security holes with the package). Snitz is also free.

2. Find an inexpensive, yet reliable host that supports your platform. The more people that you expect to hit your site, the more you will need to pay. It is best to start out with a basic plan and upgrade as your site grows. I would suggest something in the $10/month ballpark.

i should have pointed out that we're mac users :)