Tools to build a Forum

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cindynotbrady
Posts: 157
Joined: Wed Mar 01, 2006 3:49 pm
Location: Provo, Utah

Tools to build a Forum

Unread post by cindynotbrady »

Hello,

I am a huge fan of HelpAndManual and recently even converted one of our clients to use it as well. They purchased six copies, so I'm sure the referral check to me is in the mail. :D At any rate, I will be traveling to their offices to teach them about HelpAndManual, and I thought I might also sell them on the idea of having a Forum site much like this one for their users. The only problem is I do not know the first thing about these Forum types of sites. Are they mostly free? Of course I've seen them all over the Internet, and I think it would be cool if I knew a little bit more about them, so I could tell this client, "In addition to great help, you could offer your customers a customizable forum site."

Do you or others on this site have some good feedback on Forum sites and how to implement them?
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Tim Green
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Re: Tools to build a Forum

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Cindy,

There are a lot of forum systems out there, both free and paid. The better versions of both provide pretty much equally good quality and features. The main difference is that you get personal support and guidance with the paid ones. With the free ones you have to rely on the documentation and support from the forum system's own forum, and you will generally be expected to have quite a high level of experience in managing software systems on websites to begin with.

We use phpBB, which is a very good free system that is well-established, powerful and very stable. It is not all that intuitive for beginners, however, and I wouldn't recommend it if you have never managed web-based software systems before unless you are willing to spend quite a bit of time learning.

One of the top paid solutions is called Burning Board from a company called WoltLab. I don't have experience with it myself, but it has an excellent reputation. Other forum members will probably provide more recommendations.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Martin Wynne
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Re: Tools to build a Forum

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

A plug from me for a paid-for forum software few will have heard of -- UltraBB from: https://clientarea.data1systems.com/ultrabb.php

As forum software goes it is fairly basic and quite old. But rock-solid reliable and very easy to Admin. I use it for my software support.

But the reason I'm plugging it is not for the software, but for the service you will get from the developer Jim Hale, who runs a small web-hosting company in Columbus Ohio, Data 1 Systems. Jim is a techie who can't help falling over himself to help his customers. He's not a reseller, he has his own rack in the cera.net data centre, and thinks nothing of driving over there before breakfast, toolkit in hand, if some problem has arisen overnight. He will do the UltraBB installation for you free of charge (most providers charge), not necessarily on his own servers if you want to host it elsewhere, and provides a full ticketing support service again free of charge (most providers charge). Jim won't rest until you are up and running with no problems.

If you want to install some other forum software hosted on his servers he will help with that too, although he may then make a charge.

I've had all my hosting with Jim for nearly 10 years now, and would never dream of going anywhere else.

I have no connection with Data 1 Systems other than being a very satisfied customer.

Martin.
Simon Dismore
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Location: London, UK

Re: Tools to build a Forum

Unread post by Simon Dismore »

Tim

Would you consider reconfiguring your phpBB to index 3-character strings? It is sometimes useful to look for short words, e.g. today I was wondering about git support. And there's VCS, TFS, svg, gif, png, jpg, xls and so on.

The steps are discussed in this phpBB topic.

Thanks for considering this :wink:
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Tim Green
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Re: Tools to build a Forum

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Simon,

Thanks for suggesting this. I've changed the setting from 5 to 3 but I haven't rebuilt the search index. Given the number of postings in the forum database this process can take up to 2 days to complete, so I'm not going to start it until the Easter weekend, when traffic should be at a minimum. 8)

We'll then see how it goes and how performance is. At the moment we're using phpBB's native search. If it gets problematic we can try switching to the full-text MySQL platform instead.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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cindynotbrady
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Joined: Wed Mar 01, 2006 3:49 pm
Location: Provo, Utah

Re: Tools to build a Forum

Unread post by cindynotbrady »

Thanks for the tips! This is terrific! I will share this with my clients. P.S. Turns out they purchased 15 copies. I am now feeling overwhelmed. I thought I would just be teaching a hand-full of people. Now I will be teaching more like 20 people. Thank goodness for this forum, as I'm sure my training for one week will not be sufficient enough.
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