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There are many options for starting a discussion forum on your website. This includes both "free" and paid options as well as those that are actually hosted on your web server or those that are hosted by another company, for you. There are many reasons why you would want a forum on your website.
Everything from user generated content, to building a sense of community among your users. There are a virtually unlimited array of things that you can accomplish with a discussion forum. Most are used for their generally accepted purpose of community discussion but there are also many diverse examples of very well implemented uses designed for things like customer support, tutorials or just about anything you can think of. Here I just want to start with two options. These two options happen to be the two most popular and based just upon that, it makes good sense for you to consider them. Why? To follow the crowd? No. But consider this, if you use one of these two options then chances are that most of your users new and established will have been to and participated on, another site that uses one of these two forums. That means familiarity and little to no learning curve. The familiarity means that your users and potential users are more comfortable with the User Interface and more likely to participate - and that is what you want! The first option is vBulletin. vBulletin has been around for a long time and the software is mature and battle tested. It has an active, professional development staff that works year round on the software and there are regular updates, security fixes and patches. That is one of the key signs of quality software. It is used by some of the highest trafficked websites on the planet. I've also seen some of the key developers of the second option phpBB3, state openly that vBulletin was a benchmark that they aspire to. vBulletin is a quality option (many say THE best quality option) but it is paid software. vBulletin has various options to pay for the software from buying it outright for a single site license to annual leasing and support options. With that license you get access to hundreds of templates, mods and hacks. Some officially supported by the makers of vBulletin and others offered by third party developers. And not insignificantly you also have a very large, world-wide community of developers that you can turn to for support, customizations and other needs. vBulletin: Click here for Instant Community  The second option is phpBB3. phpBB3 is another great option and unlike vBulletin, it is "free" open source software. You can go to the phpBB3 site right now, download the latest version and have it installed on your site within a couple of hours or less depending upon your level of sophistication and how much you want to customize it. I put the word "free" in quotes because as with most free software the free part essentially means that it is free to download, install and use but when you factor Cost of Ownership, free software is not always less expensive than paid software. I've actually used phpBB a lot longer and more extensively than vBulletin and in my opinion cost of ownership can actually be considerably less expensive with vBulletin. But this is something for you or your technology staff to figure out what is best for your situation. Like vBulletin, phpBB3 has a vast community of 3rd party developers that can help you. There are also many mods, hacks and templates available. Many are likewise free. This small article is intended strictly as a starting point. If you are considering the implementation of a forum on your website, it behooves you to consider these two options. If you want to start with phpBB3, please make sure that someone qualified to do so, supervises the installation and launches the forum only after your files and directories have been properly secured. Security is always an issue here and you need to keep your forum updated with the latest security patches otherwise you risk hacking attacks on your forum or even on your entire server through un-patched vulnerabilities. Similar cautions of course apply with vBulletin or any web-based software. If you choose vBulletin and you don't feel confident with such things, consider their paid installation option. At a future date we'll look more extensively at forum options as well as the myriad of possibilities for the use of forums on your website. |
