Choosing a Forum Hosting Service
What to look for in a forum host? -How long they have been in busy? -What their support is like? -How many forums do they host? -What kind of themes do they offer? -What mods do they offer?
The best way to start a community is to start off with a free forum on a hosting service. On those services you can buildup your community and get members active without having to pay for it. Most free forum hosts offer unlimited bandwidth for you to use in exchange for some small advertising on your forum. You get your own free forum which you are able to customize in almost any way you wish. Many large forums today still use forum hosting services including some of the larger boards out there that contain well over 100,000 posts.
The main thing to consider when registering for a new forum with these services. Is how long these services have been in business and how active do they seem. Visit the support forums for hosting service that you choose and see if there have been any recent updates.
Some Forum Hosts and what they have to offer:
SMF For Free (http://www.smfforfree.com) - provides free Simple Machines Forums Features: Free subdomain Style Manager Arcade installed with 100+ games. Attachments supported Links Mod installed Paid subscriptions installed Staff page mod installed Ad Free and Ad hosted forums. Been around since August 2005
CreateMyBB (http://www.createmybb.com) - provides free MyBB hosting Features: Free subdomain 10 themes but the themes can customized in almost any way. IRC mod installed Attachments supported Cash Mod Shoutbox mod MyBB War installed Many other mods installed. Ad Free option. Been around since April 2006
EasyPHPBB.com (http://www.easyphpbb.com) - provides free phpBB Hosting Features: 300+ templates installed. Arcade mod installed. eXtreme Styles mod Avatar Gallery Forum Archive mod Free subdomain Been around Since Feb 2005
I suggest you look at each of these forum hosting services. They each provide a different forum system and you can test which one works the best for you. Right now SMF, phpBB, and MyBB are the most popular free forum software. Of those forum options I tend to prefer either SMF or MyBB since they contain the most features.
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