starting up technical forum website

[rikit]

I want to start up a technical forum website. This forum would consist of technical questions, answers, updates, and so on... Let me explain...I work on ATM Kiosk machines for the corporation I work for. My corporation used to carry contracts on these units, but decided to do away with the contracts and go in house maintenance. This is were I came in about a 1 1/2 years ago. I was basically the first official tech. Now it has caught on to all our other properties. Since we are all over the US I think a technical forum would be a good way we could share our experiences and knowledge among eachother. I will ask our corporation to back us on this first, but if they do not I may have to go outside the corporation to start a forum. I would like some pointers in starting a forum and tips for information on how to moderate a forum. I have been around forums for awhile and have some ideas but I would like to gain somemore knowledge about being a moderator. Thanks

[BJ_M]

well you could just set up a private group at google if you dont want to spend to much time at it -- http://www.google.ca/grphp?hl=en

but most hosting companies have forum stuff -- dreamhost is one such ISP that i know about - but there are many others

[thecoalman]

1. Get a host and domain, plans start around $8 a month that will support a fairly significant amount of traffic.

2. Set up a database in the control panel.

3. Download phpbb here: http://www.phpbb.com/downloads/ and install it.

4. Now the hard part, to get people to use it.

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If you want to try it out on your windows machine you can download easyphp here which will set up test server with all the necessary requirements to run phpbb like you would from a live server: http://www.easyphp.org/

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As far as moderating goes if your forum is going to focus on technical problems moderating really becomes a non-issue except for maintenance type stuff like moving posts. I have a forum dealing with anthracite coal heating that gets a fair amount of traffic and haven't had any trouble with any members, the bad elements just aren't there.

[lordsmurf]

- phpbb is merely one alternative. Just be aware it gets hacked the most, since it's the most open of forums.
- SMF is an option too.
- vbulletin costs $160 for an owned license, and is really a high-end product
- Snitz is good for Windows/ASP solution

Most forums run on php, use mysql/mssql, and can run on either Linux or Windows servers. Your biggest issues are security, bandwidth, and features. For example, do you JUSt want a forum, or would you like to incorporate a portal system? For example, forum PLUS a blog, gallery, downloads area, etc. Something like Communityserver might be nice (ASP.NET), especially if the company has a Windows/SQL environment available for you (and many do!). You might quality for the free version of that one (quite a few do).

Moderating usually is not an issue for private sites or company/business sites. It's really just the public forums where you get the ******** that require moderation.

Be careful going outside the company on this project. If you have an NDA or are expected to keep certain information to yourself, you could wind up in a world of trouble.

[thecoalman]

- phpbb is merely one alternative. Just be aware it gets hacked the most, since it's the most open of forums.

It gets hacked because people run older versions and don't apply updates. If you check the phpbb forums for "My forum has been kacked" threads you'll see every single one of them were older outdated versions. The current version of phpbb2 just went through an extensive security audit and is secure as can be expected.

[lordsmurf]

Updating can be a pain in the butt, so decide in advance how much time you want to spend updating site code. Granted, you should try to update code as much as possible, but customized forums are harder to update, and then phpbb does tend to be high on the "most hacked" list.

Not saying phpbb is bad, but know what you're getting into.