How to Install and Configure a Forum

Once you've built your website, you might like to offer your visitors an opportunity to interact with it, and to talk to you and each other without having to use email. Forums are absolutely ideal for this purpose. Choosing a Forum Before you can install a forum, you need to decide which forum software you want to use. In most cases, this decision will depend on what your server can run and whether or not you want to pay. Here are some of the options: vBulletin (www.invisionpower.com). Another commercial forum with a devoted community releasing add-ons, but not as large as vBulletin. Again, PHP and MySQL. Its pricing structure is also broadly similar to vBulletin's, but slightly more expensive. Really, you might as well use vBulletin instead of this. Ikonboard (www.phpbb.com). phpBB is a free and open source PHP forum that supports more or less every database system out there. It has a large community and an easy templating system, and is currently the most popular open source forum out there - it comes pre-installed on many hosts. YaBB (Eclipse Domain Services

Domain Names, Hosting, Traffic and Email Solutions.