I have been thinking about creating a forum. It would be a relatively small group and I have GoDaddy as my host.
So the questions are:
How much work would it be to setup and more importantly maintain? Is Spam a big problem?
Is it a challenge to integrate it into the site or can I just have it basically be a standalone page as well? A standalone might be easier to deal with?
What software should I consider? GoDaddy has some software, but I also don’t want to be tied to them in case I ever want to change hosts. I would like something simple and professional looking. I don’t mind paying for software either, especially if its going to minimize my efforts.
Go Daddy is a terrible web host. Get a better one.
Let me share my experience with Go Daddy. For the first year or so they were pretty good. I wouldn’t call the server I was on speedy, but it was acceptable. Then over time the server got slower and slower. Forum pages were taking between 20 and 30 seconds to generate. To give you a little comparison, on my current web host the page generation time is about 0.08 seconds. That’s how bad Go Daddy got.
SMF is a terrible forum. It sucks. It is not developed. There has been very little development in the past 5 years. Version 2 will probably never be finished. Many of the developers left to start their own forum system, which will probably suck just as much as SMF does.
Spam will be a huge problem on SMF. It can be a huge problem on phpBB3, too. However, phpBB3 recently added a feature where you can change your CAPTCHA method. You can use reCAPTCHA as your visual verification method. You can also create your own questions and answers which will be different from any other boards making it next to impossible for spam bots to spam your board.
Unfortunately, most forum systems are a major hassle to integrate into your site. You don’t integrate the forum into the design of your site as much as you integrate your site into the forum. You have to modify the forum templates to make it look like your site, include in your site header, footer, navigation panel, etc.
vBulletin is very popular among paid choices. phpBB3 is good, but its permission system is insanely complex, its template system is a joke, and it could use some work minimizing the number of screens it takes to accomplish simple administrative tasks like deleting a post.
Among free choices, phpBB3 is years ahead of crappy SMF.
I think it would take 5, 6 hours if it’s a complex one. I have a news website and it takes more than 6 hours. But if you are at start with the forum it will take less with the moderating part. To avoid spaming use some complex CAPCHA.
To insert the forum into the website you need some programming knowledge, some PHP.
How much work would it be to setup and more importantly maintain? Is Spam a big problem?
Is it a challenge to integrate it into the site or can I just have it basically be a standalone page as well? A standalone might be easier to deal with?
What software should I consider?
You need six month of intensive work,if your forum can survive beyond this period,you are likely to stand.
Spam is a BIG deal,depending on the forum software you choose from you are likely to see a modification that will help you wipe their ass,I once heard a forum that before I finished listing,90 spams got themselves registered in a space of about a week.
I will recommend Simple machine forum,IP Board or Vbulletin(If you have some cash to spare).
I prefer the latter.
I ended up going with simple machines. I looked at vBulletin, but simple machines seemed to look better to me. Money was not really an issue.
I set the verification image to high and the admin must approve accounts with email verification as well.
No spam so far, but its early on. I can’t imagine getting any with that level of security, but maybe I will check the simple machines forums out to see what they say.
I’m sure that’s a good choice. I wasn’t trying to push you in any direction, and I have no right to, as I’ve not set up a forum myself. If you have the time and inclination, there are probably more advantages to having an open source forum under your own control.
Hoping I won’t get spammed, but I am also hoping to get a few people to help out as moderators if/when that occurs. Think that would take care of it?
You no doubt will get spammed, but it’s just a part of life (like winter viruses). Having helpers is a great idea. Good luck with it!
Perhaps against your better judgment, I am going to give simple machines a shot. It looks the most professional to me, any other comments about it? Are there any better pay forums or are the open source ones actually better?
Hoping I won’t get spammed, but I am also hoping to get a few people to help out as moderators if/when that occurs. Think that would take care of it?
At it’s simplest, assuming you don’t need to shift elements around, you need to find out how the style sheet is linked to each page, and either redirect the cms to your own style sheet or modify the existing one. It’s different for each cms, unfortunately.
No problem, I ignore you have the time anyway haha, just kidding. But sometimes it is good to be challenged so you can continue increasing your knowledge base. I am really wanting a “real” forum and I think it can be locked down pretty good. Though it is more of a pain for the user to have go through all of that, I am OK with that trade.
Now…how the heck do you do some minor forum customization? That code confuses me to be honest. It’s a free download…hinthint
Curious. I set the settings to “high” for image verification and that the user account be verified by the admin and then the email must be verified. Shouldn’t that pretty much lock out any spam attack?
The default was medium image verification with instant login, not requiring email verification. I am wondering if that is typically a spam environment while the higher security settings would not be?
Most forum software you can pretty much upload as is and you’re off. If you want to style it to taste, there will be a bit more work. I’m sure you can upload to a sub folder and just have the forum as a section of your site, too.
However, as you say, setting up is one thing, but managing and spambusting is another. The more popular the forum becomes, the more spam you will get. An alternative worth considering is the many hosted solutions which you can use that don’t require coding, but which you can still customize, such as
From a forums perspective, Simple Machines, looks like a good one.
From the second list, TenderApps looks pretty good. But on the second list you mentioned, I have a hard time even see what most of those look like in action. Some of them look kind of “cheesey” too, but maybe that is just me.
Exactly where does the spam come from? Is that from an actual person who creates a bogus account, since registration should filter out most spammers. Since I expect it to be a small community (maybe less than 100) for some time, I don’t know if I will have much of a problem.
Tenderapps has a monthly fee. Is that for the management of it and to filter out spam, etc? The monthly fee is not too bad for the entry level, but can get pretty expensive. Again, it would be nice to actually see them in action to see what you can get for the money.
