Forum Hosting

Adjogranty

Hey Guys,

I am developing a website for Irish Entrepreneurs and Small Business.

The site plan would have a front page.

running to a forum (main part), blog / podcast, about us, embedded video section (taking videos from site like u tube but embedding them in to the website)

I am currently using grou.ps but this is not working as its very glitchy and was only designed for the short term.
http://www.bizmindsireland.com

The questions I have are.

1. Would Vbulletin do the job for the site using the publishing suite or is there a viable alternative? My web design skills are basic.

2. What web-host would be best to go to and what package would I need for hosting.

3. What are the steps needed to get a .ie web address.

Thanks for your help

Eoin

1) phpBB might do the trick (and it's free). I'm sure there are plugins that enable video embedding and blog integration etc.

2) You can't discuss hosting companies here - but to be general, PHP and MySQL would probably be the best for what you need I'd say.

3) There are a few ways to register a .ie domain name. The easiest way in my experience is to register a business name with the CRO. This costs €20 if you do it online. Check out www.iedr.ie for the other options.

cormee

vBulletin is great but it costs a bit. It has the inbuilt CMS and blogs you are looking for too. But as Eoin suggested - try phpBB, if your site gets enough traffic upgrade to vBulletin. Upgrading is just a matter of installing vBulletin, clicking a link to import the phpBB database and you're done.

Your current forum isn't very busy and purchasing expensive software isn't going to be a magic bullet that fixes that, so if I was you I'd wait and see how traffic increases before spending.

Adjogranty

thanks for your advice guys you can always count on boards.

What sort of hosting package (not company - attributes) would I need to host this?

Adjogranty

eoin wrote: »

The easiest way in my experience is to register a business name with the CRO. This costs €20 if you do it online. Check out www.iedr.ie for the other options.

Do you have to do up a memo and arts?
What are the consquences of doing this for the directors?

Eoin

PHP with MySQL - they both run on Windows as well as UNIX these days, but my experience is that because the Windows licensing is more expensive, you're as well off to go with UNIX unless you've something specific that requires windows. I'm open to correction on that of course.

Eoin

Adjogranty wrote: »

Do you have to do up a memo and arts?
What are the consquences of doing this for the directors?

No, none of that. You're just registering a business name that any Irish individual can do. There's no connection between an RBN and any other obligations for filing returns etc.

Do you have a company at the moment - if so, does it match (or is it close to) the .ie domain name you want to get? If so, then you can register the domain using your company number.

Adjogranty

I apply to get the .IE as an unincorporated association and reserved the company name just in case the registry does not accept that. Is it possible to change this classification later on ? (Unincorporated Association)

I have decided to go with the vBulletin. It just seems like a more professional looking package. We want to go to universities and societies with Bizminds in the new year. With the current state of the place I think it can do some good.

Eoin

I'm sure your domain registrar will be able to update the classification if the IEDR query it.

Pixelcraft

I find most forums a little bit counter intuitive, I do like Vanilla for it's simplicity - might be worth a consideration!

mneylon

Pixelcraft wrote: »

I find most forums a little bit counter intuitive, I do like Vanilla for it's simplicity - might be worth a consideration!

Is that still being actively developed?

I tried it a couple of years ago and found it was a bit lacking in features in some areas, but obviously less bloated in others