Forum Hosting : Compare Hosting

What is Forum Hosting?

If your site needs a message board where you and your customers can interact, particularly in a more controlled setting than social media sites allow, then adding a forum to your site may be the ideal solution.

An Internet forum is a website or an area of a site where people can have discussions with each other. A forum may have a single topic or several topic areas under which discussions are created. These conversations are known as threads. Each thread consists of a string of messages and replies. The organization of these messages varies depending on the structure of the message board, but generally they are hierarchical.

The administrators of a message board control posting and site options. Some sites allow you to post anonymously. Others require you to create an account and log in before posting messages. Moderators help eliminate spammers, keep conversations polite, encourage interaction, and address questions and complaints.

Message boards may be displayed as threaded or non-threaded. The former is best for sites where a message will have many replies (and sometimes replies to those replies). This allows you to view a thread as a list where it’s obvious which item a poster is responding to. Non-threaded displays would be useful in situations where there won’t be replies, such as announcements.

Many forums allow you to format posts. This is a way for you to show your individuality, emphasis a comment, and even include business information as a means of advertising. Usually either hypertext markup language (HTML) or bulletin board code (BBCode) tags are allowed. You can use these tags to stylize a signature that attaches to all your posts, as well. Signatures are a good place to link to your business.

Forums have their own social code of conduct you should be aware of. If you haven’t used forums before, you must familiarize yourself with them before creating one for your business. A message board that doesn’t add anything to your business or give value to your customers will ultimately fall silent. Your forum must give your clients a safe place to connect and get their questions answered quickly.

Which Forum Software?

Here are a few of the most popular forum choices:

bbPress

bbPress is a WordPress-based forum system “with a twist.” It was created by the same team that created WordPress, and is designed to be run on a self-hosted WordPress site (not on a WordPress.com-powered blog).

Because bbPress was created by the core WordPress team, it was built with similar values in mind. It is simple, lightweight, and there is as little code as possible. The main bbPress code base contains only the features needed by truly everyone, and any additional features are available in one of almost 200 plugins.

Why use bbPress?

bbPress is definitely the right choice if you want to add a forum or bulletin board system to an existing WordPress site.

Also, if you are launching a new project in which you need regular Content Management features as well as a forum, you should strongly consider using bbPress with WordPress, because it will enable your users to interact with both your “main site” and your forum with a single login.

Using bbPress without a WordPress blog

The bbPress forum software depends on WordPress software to function. Therefore, you cannot install and run bbPress independent of it.

However, you have a lot of WordPress experience already, you may still want to use bbPress for a project even if there will be no blog or other standard website pages.

This is easy to accomplish.

Simply adjust your settings to display the bbPress page on the home page, and it will be the main feature of your site.

Even if you aren’t running a traditional blog this might be a good option because you can use WordPress Pages for simple “About” content or use the Posts system for general news and Forum announcements. IT also gives you some flexibility for the future.

bbPress Hosting Requirements

Almost any web host that supports WordPress will also support bbPress. Specifically, the only technical requirements are:

• PHP version 5.2.4 or greater
• MySQL version 5.0 or greater
• The mod_rewrite Apache module

phpBB

phpBB is a fully featured bulletin board and forum system. It is the most widely used forum software on the internet, running on sites visited by millions of people daily.

Unlike bbPress, it is standalone software.

Why use phpBB?

As opposed to the WordPress/bbPress philosophy of keeping features out of the core code base, phpBB is a feature-rich solution. The developers assume that most people want forums to work mostly the same way, and so popular features are included.

This has benefits and drawbacks, of course.

The good thing about this approach is that it is much easier to get up and running with a fairly standard forum implementation without having to consider every single feature.

The downside is that you may not actually want users to have every available feature. Some typical forum features, like user images and emoji (smile icons) contribute to a very cluttered user experience that may not be appropriate to your audience.

Our own recommendation is that phpBB is the right choice if your expected audience is familiar with forums and are frequent users of other online bulletin board systems. phpBB will look and feel very familiar to these users, and a forum that doesn’t follow these patterns may disappoint the people most likely to engage with your website.

phpBB Hosting Requirements

The full requirements for phpBB hosting are somewhat detailed, though fairly common. Many web hosts specifically support phpBB and even provide one-click installation of it through their control panel, via Softaculous, Simple Scripts, or another install wizard.

vbulletin

Of the three bulletin board systems profiled here, vbulletin is the only one that is not Open Source. Rather, vbulletin is commercial software.

Why use vbulletin

With several free and Open Source alternatives available, the natural question is: Why use vbulletin?

Most of the basic bulletin board system functions are essentially the same, but there is at least one feature that vbulletin has which makes it worth paying for: Mobile apps.

The vbulletin Mobile Bundle license includes software to publish native iOS and Android apps which act as clients for your vbulletin forums.

vbulletin Hosting Requirements

• PHP 5.3.0 (5.4 or higher recommended)
• MySQL 5.1.5 (5.5 or higher recommended)
• mod_rewrite, URL Rewrite, or equivalent.
• GD or ImageMagick
• cURL or OpenSSL

Simple Machines Forum

Simple Machine Forum is a free and Open Source forum software with a loyal user base and an extensive ecosystem of plugins (called “mods” in SMF).

SMF is very popular, especially among webmasters and forum owners who do not have a lot of development and coding experience. The built-in package manager system and mod system make it very easy to set up and use and moderate.

Simple Machines Forum Hosting Requirements

The requirements for SMF are extensive, but fairly common, including a number of standard PHP libraries and web server configuration settings. Rather than trying to track down whether a hosting company supports each individual requirement, your best bet is to find a web host that has “out-of-the-box” support for Simple Machines Forum.

Also see: MyBB

Choosing a Host for Your Forum

Web hosting packages are not generally focused on, or marketed as, “forum-friendly hosting,” but many hosting providers offer some sort of forum package as a one-click install via their hosting control panel.

Free forum solutions are also available for download and installation at various freeware sites around the Internet. To avoid problems, however, be sure to consult your provider regarding any potential compatibility or resource issues before installing a forum on your site.