Forum = Money?

[denchomsky]

Is there any money to be made from hosting a forum?

I am thinking of setting up a forum using my domain name ukhiphop.co.uk,but was wondering if there is any money to be made from forums?

My other options are :

1.Parking - gets around 300-500 views a month, but doesn't really make that much in PPC.

2.Develop it- Up keep is to time consuming, Fast moving music genre, needs
to be updated daily.

3. Sell it - It is for sale!.. Pm me

I was thinking a forum would be quite a good idea for it? what do you guy's reckon?

Cheers.

D

 

[tifosi]

Is there any money to be made from hosting a forum?

I am thinking of setting up a forum using my domain name ukhiphop.co.uk,but was wondering if there is any money to be made from forums?

My other options are :

1.Parking - gets around 300-500 views a month, but doesn't really make that much in PPC.

2.Develop it- Up keep is to time consuming, Fast moving music genre, needs
to be updated daily.

3. Sell it - It is for sale!.. Pm me

I was thinking a forum would be quite a good idea for it? what do you guy's reckon?

Cheers.

D

If the site gets enough targetted traffic then yes, I'm the admin for www.coldplaying.com. The forum has become the main source of use for the site and the advertising effectively pays for the site & server etc.

S

 

[denchomsky]

Thanks for the reply tifosi, what forum software would you recomend, and what level of hosting would i need?

Thanks

D

 

[tifosi]

It depends on traffic and futureproofing.

Top of the range is vBulletin. More server friendly for high capacity. Lots of mods. Comes at a price.

Free ones. Start with phpBB.

We started with bog-standard shared hosting, moved to a VPS, then a small dedi-server, then a big dedicated server. Tha last ones need experience in server administration. The VPS normally comes with a standard setup. Think about things like memory & php version.

S

 

[Admin]

It depends on traffic and futureproofing.

Top of the range is vBulletin. More server friendly for high capacity. Lots of mods. Comes at a price.

Free ones. Start with phpBB.

We started with bog-standard shared hosting, moved to a VPS, then a small dedi-server, then a big dedicated server. Tha last ones need experience in server administration. The VPS normally comes with a standard setup. Think about things like memory & php version.

S

I agree, we started with PHPBB and then upgraded to VB - a slightly scary experience!

If you are serious, go with VB from the start, it will save you hastle later and the Admin CP is so much better than PHPBB which is rather limited. Customising the site is also much easier with mods and templates, with PHPBB we were hand coding PHP files.

 

[sneezycheese]

I agree, we started with PHPBB and then upgraded to VB - a slightly scary experience!

If you are serious, go with VB from the start, it will save you hastle later and the Admin CP is so much better than PHPBB which is rather limited. Customising the site is also much easier with mods and templates, with PHPBB we were hand coding PHP files.

...Please don't shoot me, but as someone using 'M****soft' WS and MS SQL Server, can anyone recommend any 'good' asp forum SW? :???: