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rtrobertson4 · #1 (**permalink**) 02-27-2008, 10:06 AM

My partner and I are considering starting a new web site. The site will be a forum style site, where anyone can register, free of charge, to give their input in certain areas. Their will be different categories and the goal is to build the site so that it generates a large volume of hits, so that it is appealing to advertisers. Obviously, the end result is to make money from ads. My question is, what is the best web host for this type of site? Thanks.[email="rtrobertson4@earthlink.net"]

jaressloo · #2 (**permalink**) 02-27-2008, 04:00 PM

The bulletin that is provided for this site is a good one. It's not free though. It's called vBulletin.

There are a few bulletin sites out there that are free and decent. http://www.freeforums.org is a good one for the free route.

The problem is that it's kind of hard to start out as a bulletin site unless you have a lot of people who are willing to help you market it. It won't be hit by a whole lot of search engines until there starts to be some content on it. It's usually to start with a website, gain traffic with that, and then once you have a lot of hits per day, then introduce the bulletin.

Just a thought.

lisa · #3 (**permalink**) 02-27-2008, 10:54 PM

Jaress is right. Unless you know your board will have steady activity upfront, I wouldn't start off with a forum. Been there done that and it failed many times. I had to wait until my main site got enough traffic to make this forum successful.

phpbb.com is another goody. I used them once before. They are free but not as many cool features as some of the paid ones like vbulletin. Also vbulletin has a plugin called VBSEO and it turns all the forum URLs into static HTML instead of PHP. Makes it easier for the search engines to read and it creates a sitemap for your forum that is submitted to all the major engines. Posts here often get found in the search engines literally 2 hours after someone creates it.

So every time a new post is added my sitemap gets created and submitted in the background. It costs $140 in addition to the vbulletin license but well worth it.

rtrobertson4 · #4 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 12:47 PM

Let me clarify a little, and thanks for the response. I probably should not have used the word forum. There will be content on the web page, but it also will allow users to post a comment about a particular topic, without responses. Unlike this where someone can reply, this will be just average ordinary people giving their idea or opinion about a specific topic. Will Site Build It handle this type of site or should I look at another web host. Thanks a million!!

lisa · #5 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 01:11 PM

Oh I see.

Yes, Site Build It! just added a new feature called "Content 2.0" that allows people to respond to your articles and they appear at the end of your content. It's an extra $99/yr though.

rtrobertson4 · #6 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 02:33 PM

Thanks Lisa. This is a great site, tons of great information!!!

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