Which software and type of host for a forum

Ankur.J

Ankur.J

Game Guy
Disciple
1. I am looking to start a forum, I need to know which software is best both free/paid for it. I have heard a lot about phpBB and VBulletin, anyone here has any good suggestion for the same?

2. I want to know whether shared server is enough for it or should I go for VPS??
 
- Vbulltein isn't doing well at all from past year from v5 or so. Because of various reasons though, Every popular forum has now shifted to Xenforo and IPB.
Have a look at both of them. IPB had issues with SEO and this issue seems to be solved in the latest releases.

- Shared Hosting is the best way to start off and later to VPS. and avoid unlimited hosts, so that you get fair usage experience. My recommendations are Leapswitch which has options to host at two locations( India and US) If your visitors are going to be from Asia, Host in India or near by.

Other Overseas Companies include Stablehost, Crocweb for affordable hosting and hostdime.com for premium hosting. Make sure you go for SSD hosting to get the best for an forum.

Happy Hosting :)
 
For Forum software, I will recommend Xenforo (even TE is using Xenforo, so that says a lot :p).
Regarding Hosting, it depends on the location of your visitors. Visitors from where will you be targeting ?
Secondly, regarding VPS/Shared, i would say start with a good shared hosting plan first, and as the forum grows you can switch to VPS/Dedicated.
 
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Thanks for the replies guys, I will check out Xenforo, also any idea about phpBB?
Also is Xenforo made in PHP?

I will get shared server for now, but most hosting companies help in transferring data from shared to VPS.
 
yes Xenforo and most of the forums are written in PHP. As long it is cpanel to cpanel transfer they should help you in transferring the files.
Do update us with your experiences.
 
swatkats said:
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- Shared Hosting is the best way to start off and later to VPS. and avoid unlimited hosts, so that you get fair usage experience. My recommendations are Leapswitch which has options to host at two locations( India and US) If your visitors are going to be from Asia, Host in India or near by.


Happy Hosting :)
Click to expand...
Thank you swatkats .
Also look at Vanilla Forums. Its free and has a different approach to forums. You can see www.lowendtalk.com which uses Vanilla.
 
Some guy in TDF created a website for all forums at one place but I think it is still in development as it has lot of things to be sorted out to become a good product.So that we can search for any product or query from one place and thats simply awesome.
 
phpBB and Vanilla Forums are great.. I just created a forum for my friend on vanilla platform. It looks great.
 
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