web site

[richardwhulme]

Hi,

Can anyone give me some idea of what hardware / software would be required to do a web site similar to this (shell-livewire) with a similar set up for a forum? and also costs for the above.

ideally hosted by someone else.

cheers

[Designr]

Hello. You don't really need any hardware, as such, just a hosting plan to actually put the forum on. This forum is running vBulletin Version 2.2.8 (http://www.vbulletin.com/) which costs from $85. However, I would consider looking at Invision Board http://www.invisionboard.com which is just as good (if not better) and is free fo charge.

You will need to have a suitable hosting account with PHp/ Mysql. (Most Linux hosts can provide this) A working model of Invision Board can be found here: http://forums.designrweb.co.uk as we use this ourselves.

Kind regards
Jay
Design R Web Solutions

[chilleddesign]

Hi There

If you search through this forum there are quite a few threads about different forums that you could use and install.

Regards

Chris

[kris_leeds]

Originally posted by richardwhulme
Hi,

Can anyone give me some idea of what hardware / software would be required to do a web site similar to this (shell-livewire) with a similar set up for a forum? and also costs for the above.

ideally hosted by someone else.

cheers

As Chris said, there are many different forums, although in my experience, vBulletin are probably one of the best around. I know that sites with a huge amount of visitors never have any problems with them, for example, www.soccergaming.com. A site a friend of mine runs, they use vBulletin.

As for building a site like this, probably Macromedia products, the Introduction and main menu are made in Flash by the looks of it.

[gary]

vBulletin is very good, and there is also the free alternative phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com). Invision Board as mentioned earlier is also popular. For Windows there's Snitz (http://forum.snitz.com).

One thing you may want to watch out for though, is a busy forum can wreak havoc on a shared server and you may find yourself having to move to a dedicated server pretty sharply if you want to keep it running!

Gary

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