| Subject: Re: The option of a new forum format |
Author:
Tony Buckley
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Date Posted: 10/04/05 11:50:04
In reply to:
Nick
's message, "Re: The option of a new forum format" on 9/04/05 17:30:51
Nick,
”I think the new format could be a useful thing, and I'm waiting to see if it is what people want. I won't be taking up Tony's kind offer of hosting it though, I have a preference for a more independent route which would be based around accepting technical help where it was offered but not committing anybody to long term support. I'd be very pleased to accept Tony's help in achieving this.”
I have no problem hosting the site and the support work would be minimal – just add the domain name into existing automated scripts and its done. Just take action when necessary. But I do understand why you may want to look elsewhere. Backing up the messages is an option from the admin pages so you can keep a complete record of the forum structure and messages and take it wherever you wish, should I end up as part of the boating statistics.
There are plenty of phpbb boards out there that are free. There aren’t many downsides of using one of these, but (in no order):
1) Possibly slow, as they won’t give much attention to the bandwidth on free boards.
2) Possibly down sometimes (although the actual phpbb product is pretty stable now).
3) You have to accept banner advertising on each page.
4) You won’t be able to change the tags in the code to get the board high on the search engines, but over time with enough messages this will happen automatically if the boards are open to search robots. Also the main site seems to have got itself noticed very well without tags, so as long as the forum is linked, there won’t be a problem with people finding you.
5) It’s unlikely you will have the facility to backup or restore the messages, so if things go wrong and messages are lost, then they are lost.
6) The terms and conditions will always say that they can pull the board with no notice if they want to. More of a safety net for them, than likely to happen.
7) No option to install add ons like picture uploads but as you said, you’d prefer to do that on the main site anyhow.
8) No idea of what kind of traffic and hence size of community you have out there. I’ve been very surprised it’s been getting so much! 1100 hits so far since the 4th April.
Taking all that into account, you would still have a better forum than you have now (in my opinion).
One such site that offers phpbb that you can get up and running within seconds is: http://www.freeibforums.com/. I don’t know anything about them, but just tried to setup a board and it worked very quickly and flawlessly and most of the admin options that are available on a full install seem to be there (message backup has been disabled).
I’d be glad to help as much as I can, but if you take this route there would be nothing for me to do. I said I’d look after the technical stuff (speed monitoring, traffic management, and backups), but with a free host, there would be no option to do any of this.
Anyway, see what more people think and then you can decide.
Tony
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