Hello again. You might remember I posted a question on this forum recently asking if anyone knew of good Perl based forum software. Well, I decided to write my own forum script for my website to find out how such a thing is done. While I was wading through hundreds of lines of Perl code today an idea came to me; what about launching a service specifically to host forums for people, with my new Perl code at the core of it? Sites (like Myspace) already exist that allow people to easily create mini websites for free, but this dosn't extend to having your own forum. So the idea is, register on "Community Web" for free, then setting up a forum is achived by stepping through some easy online forms and control panels. It would also be possible to set up other site features (like audio / video) players, as it is on Myspace. Then I could rake in the money from advertising revenue :p . Does anyone have an opinion on the chance of sucess of this idea? Thanks.

Steven.

I don't remember their names offhand, but there are a good number of forum hosting companies out there already, and sites that give you free forums on their domains. Most are PHP though (ie phpBB forums).

LOL this idea was thought of long ago.

I personally think this field is very competitive and you won't get much reward out of free hosting either.

If anything, I suggest that if you make a great script with great features, why not just sell it for a price? It needn't be super expensive, but you might make a bit out of it if you market it properly and it might be more attractive if you offer "free" hosting along with the license.