Forum:Forum types

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Good morning folks!

I'm wanting to start up a forum for my local community - there is a guy in my town that runs one but he's a RWNJ, YEC, and general anti science and pro all things religion.

What's the best/better platform for running a forum? I'm considering phpbb...thoughts oh IT wizards?

Jrock1203 (talk) 14:14, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

all the cool kids use proboard.--Miekal 14:34, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

but seriously, if you want a community thing; facebook. it's a lot easier to get a location based group running and cared about if its on facebook than some board.--Miekal 14:34, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

never heard of proboards - thanks for that chief. I know, FB FTW. I want something I can customize and play with, that's why I'm willing to take on the cost and work of a private site. Jrock1203 (talk) 14:36, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

You'll be trading a lot of membership for it though; i recommend starting on facebook and then getting your own site if the FB thing takes off and they'd support it. Going straight for the gold will likely not work in a way that justifies the time and money spent. --Miekal 14:38, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Budget, functional needs, and existing tech resources you have available, please. If you've already got a have decent linux webserver with spare capacity, my recommendations are gonna be pretty different from if you have nothing and no money to spend. Ikanreed (talk) 14:55, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

already have a hosting package set up, would just need to purchase the domain and set everything up. Friend of mine recommending vbulletin. Thoughts? Jrock1203 (talk) 16:58, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Your friends' suggestion of vbulletin doesn't seem bad. I mean, what I know is: 1. You want a forum. 2. You want it to have changeable scripts. 3. You've got a server available. It's good for all that. It's a fairly non-contentious suggestion, all in all. Ikanreed (talk) 18:39, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Honestly I think it would actually be best to use your own custom design. If you have some experience with programming I think you honestly won't find php all that hard. My friend and I actually made a functional 4chan clone http://www.ithacapost.com/ithachan/. The main concern you'll have to worry about is security, but for what sounds like a small scale system you shouldn't run into too many people trying to vandalize or attack your site. Running a website that you actually designed will make many day to day tasks of server maintenance easier, plus in my opinion designing that sort of thing is really fun. Then again if you aren't really comfortable with programming or server hosting you might want to consider a third party program. Samstr (talk) 19:22, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Counterpoint: don't do this. You won't have any features for months while you get code into place. Ikanreed (talk) 14:32, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Ahhh, but it's much more fun than using some out of the box software. Also, if we were more serious about that site we'd probably throw in a few extra features (probably some better looking CSS.) All in all I suppose it isn't necessarily a good idea, but as a hobbyist programmer it's a sort of fun exercise to try. Samstr (talk) 23:09, 4 November 2014 (UTC)