How can I make my forum better?

How can i make a forum?

• i was wondering how to make a forum community and tie it together with my own domain. most of the ones i have seen have crappy sub-domains. would you be able to name a forum application perhaps also the creators website. thank you

• Answer:

  There are two main ways to make a forum: -VBulletin -phpBB Both of these services require a server with PHP and MySql capabilities. VBulletin is used for most big forums and is a much better program but it costs money. I use phpBB because it is free and does a good enough job for me. The two are very similar and as long as you are not making a huge forum for thousands of users with all the bells and whistles, phpBB will probably be fine and there is no need to spend money. Once you download these "applications" (they are really not applications, more like a set of php files) and put them on your server, set up is very easy. Just follow along what it tells you to do. The download links: phpBB - http://www.phpbb.com vbulletin - http://www.vbulletin.com As for the domain thing, you literally build the forum on your current server with your current domain. So there are no sub-domains or other freeware forum sites to worry about. I would not use the free online setup kind of automatic forum things... these php tools are much better and a million times more customizable. You don't need any coding experience to customize phpBB/vbulletin... there is a whole customization design area in the control panel. There are also "skins" that you can download online to make your forum look cooler. If you do have HTML/CSS experience, you can use that knowledge too to even better customize the forum. Hope this helps! If you are confused by anything or need more info, just add details to your question and I will try to help you out! Good luck!