Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Complete noob here, but these are probably simple questons for you experts!

[PPD3195]

Hello All,

I'm looking for a hosting solution that I could use to set up a forum with login/password features and be able to assign multiple access levels based on what permission I give the user.

If there was some level of customization, that would be great, but ultimately it needs to be free, or dang close to it.

Thanks!!

[Sp4rt4n]

You might be better off having a look around FreeWHT if you really need a free solution. The only problem is, you get what you pay for.

[Geovanie R]

phpBB has some great features for a forum, and is free. You'd need to get your own hosting solution, though.

[strugar]

Sp4rt4n is right - free hosting may appear to be as worth as its price.

In the beginning, it may perfectly suit your needs. Though, as your site grows (and you want it to grow, don't you), you may face restrictions, or free hosting features may become incapable of running your site.

If you had a static site, it wouldn't be a great issue - you just pack your site and move it to another host.

Though, things with forum are not so easy - you would need to move your entire database, and some free forum providers don't allow you to do so. So, your entire efforts to build a community may fail.

Now, everything depends on what means "dang close to free" for you. If I were you, I'd skip only one coffee with friends monthly, it's some 20 EUR a year, and for those money one can get basic shared hosting package with a decent host, and a domain. If needed, that package can be easily upgraded later. Look in forum Shared Hosting Offers for offers.

Once you have your own domain and hosting, install SMF; that's free and powerfull, yet easy to use forum platform, which will surely suit your needs.

[TenNet]

Most hosts offer one click install of most popular forum's.

phpBB is exactly what you need. Its easy to use, and you can do exactly what you have asked, set up different user levels that have different permissions and as people get more posts or meet a certain criteria they move up a level.

[PPD3195]

Thanks guys, I'll check these options out. It's just a small group of people...almost like a guild site, but for a work related reason. Starting up a small business and we'll have agents all over the US that we want be able to colaborate with and share ideas.

[tnwhite]

Another vote for phpBB here... you'll need a host that offers PHP and MySQL though.

My other .02 would be to install it yourself and not trust the instant script installers. If you install it yourself you make sure you're getting the latest version and won't have any control panel-side things 'linked' to it.

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by PPD3195

Thanks guys, I'll check these options out. It's just a small group of people...almost like a guild site, but for a work related reason. Starting up a small business and we'll have agents all over the US that we want be able to colaborate with and share ideas.

Take a serious look at Do.com by Salesforce. I just started using it and it's great. It might be something you'll find useful.

[kpmedia]

phpBB is a security nightmare.
You'd be better off with SMF or MyBB, if you require a free forum.

[JaJae]

Also, look into Chatter by Salesforce. I've been using Chatter for a while now. It's basically internal groupware/Facebook/Twitter for the corporate environment.

[FocusKieran]

Originally Posted by kpmedia

phpBB is a security nightmare.
You'd be better off with SMF or MyBB, if you require a free forum.

phpBB hasn't had any major issues since phpBB 2, issues arise when people install third-party modifications with security flaws.

Though you're right that they're nice alternatives, each is for their own and it depends what suits them.

[kpmedia]

I saw two exploited phpBB3 sites this week alone. One was passing around the XP 2012 "antivirus" malware, and I forget what the other had.

phpBB2 was horrible Swiss cheese. phpBB3 is not as bad, but still crappy.

I won't dispute that mods/plugins cause the issues, but it seems phpBB mods/plugins grant far too much access to the core of the board (and possibly the file system), unlike vB, MyBB, SMF and others.

I don't know of a single popular site still running phpBB. Most bailed for vB or IPB.

[JamesOakley]

I agree with the view that there is good free forum software out there (like MyBB), but that it's worth paying for the hosting. If the site will be as quiet as you say, you should be able to do that fairly cheaply because you don't need a hosting package capable of doing great things - but you'll get better service for paying for it. Just beware of the traps of hosts who give you more for that cheap price than they can reasonably provide - too cheap to be true has similar drawbacks to free. A modest package for a modest price (say, $3 per month) should set you up nicely

[PPD3195]

So, would something link "inmotion" work as a host and then I load mybb into it and use it to develop my forum?

I wish I knew more about this...

If someone knows of a site or source of information I could go to to educate myself further on this stuff, please let me know!