What exactly do I need for a forum?

Hi there,

I just wanted to know exactly what it was that I needed for a forum. Like how much space I needed and if I could host it from a server that a build. The server that I am going to have is going to be running an Unreal Tourmanet 2003 session probably 23 hours a day. WOuld it be a good idea to host the forums off that?

If not, does anyone know any good hosts? I don't think my forum is going to get TOO much use, but it's going to be about music, Unreal Tournament 2003 and Lineage II, so I don't really know. The games' forums are going to be limited to members of my site, whom I have to accept, but the music ones are going to be there for everyone.

Can any of yall suggest a good cheap hosting service?

Or should I just go with ezboard?

I want something to match my website's theme, here at www.noahneiman.com

Forums require minimal diskspace...unless you allow Avtaars and have hundreds/thousands of members. Otherwise, its mainly Mysql diskspace and that is pretty efficient for storing data anyway.

Even 50 Mb will hold good for light forums. Cheap hosting cos. are a mystery and range from free hosts to those that charge ridiculously low and sort of vanish every month or so. Finding a low-priced host that actually does its job well is a hard search.

Your budget for "cheap" wasn't mentioned...but most people find crediblehost.com cheap and decent. Another cheap & decent host is ionwebservices.com

Most forum would require 1 MySQL Database, which generally is the part that takes up the space. For an example I will use my site, URL I have about 25MB for the actuall forum, pictures etc but then the database is somewhere around the 50MB size. So overall my forum uses about 75MB.

I wouldn't run a forum on the same server that is going to be hosting games 23 hours a day. I would be able to help you with the host part, if you could give me some details about space/ bandwidth I would be able to give you a price.

I would recomend using vBulletin ($75) a year or Invision Power Boards or phpBB, overall I prefer vBulletin and use it. However many people also use Invision - They have some nice modifications coming out. Also it would be easy and free to set up, as it is one of the FREE features I would offer.

If you would like to talk some more here are my contacts

MSN - URL
E-Mail - URL or URL

Actually, well, I've got about 2000MB of webspace in my domain, so with a fair sized forums being only about 75 MB, I think I could just do it on my webspace, right?

Also, I've got 60GB of transfer. Is that a lot? I have some music that I stream from my website, and each song is several megabytes big, although it's not actually streaming from my webspace. I've got the songs linked from another webpage called aciplanet.com. The songs are stored on Acidplanet and actualy stream from THEIR website. Does that still count as transfer from my website?

At any rate, so I've got that much space and bandwidth. Is that good enough for a forums and this webpage?

Aim for something between 100mb space and 200 mb space. With a couple sql databases. Start off with low bandwidth, for instance 5 GB Bandwidth and then upgrade as time goes. You could certainly use ezboard but I suggest developing your own forum so you can make more changes. Usually a package with 100-200 mb space, 5 gb bandwidth costs around $3-$5 a month. I wouldn't pay anything less then $3 a month as chances are that host won't be around too long. We charge $3.50 a month for 250 mb space and 5 GB bandwidth. If you have any questions, surely ask and I'll try and help ya out

So, my website would do, with 2 gigs of space and 60 gigs of transfer bandwidth? I can have multiple mySQL databases...

Yes, it would work on your servers, you would have excess space, but with the 23 hours a day gaming I am not to sure how well the speeds will be for loading the forum. Also the songs shouldn't be a problem with the bandwidth.

I could give you

100 MB Space
1 GB Bandwidth
Unlimited everything MySQL etc
$1.00/ month

or

250 MB Space
2.5GB Bandwidth
Unlimited everything MySQL etc
$2.00/ month

or

500 MB Space
5 GB Bandwidth
Unlimited everything MySQL etc
$3.00/ month

Any of those would hold a small forum rather well, just depending on how much you are expecting it to be used.

No no. I'm sorry! LOL, I think I've confused everyone with my inane babble. Ok. Here's what I'm trying to say.

I WAS originally going to run the forums from my game server, but people are telling me that the speed of the forum would suck, so forget that. I don't want people waiting to load the forums and the gamers getting lagged because of it. So I'm thinking of just putting the forums on my webpage, which is NOT on my server. It's hosted by Globat.com.

Globat is giving me 2000MB of space, with 60 gigs of bandwidth/month. People are saying that a small forums will probably be only around 75MB, tops. I can have multiple mySQL databases on my glbat webpage, so I'm thinking, hey, what the hell, why not just stick the whole forums on my webpage!

My question now, is how much space would a forums like this devshed one take up? And roughly how much bandwidth does it use per month?

Yea 2GB would be LOADS for a website and 60GB band is more than enough, my site gets around 250k hits a month and only is about 10 GB Band.