Hi All,

First post and would appreciate any help. I want to start a forum at work. The IT department have quoted an unreal price. Can someone please tell me in idiot terms what I would need and an approximate cost to get it running. For instance, I understand it would be best to run it via MS SQL - what would I need to do this (server, software etc) and approximately how much should it cost me.

many thanks for any help

Minister

PS....enjoyed reading the forum, some nice posts

Well it depends, your hosting cost will be standard no matter which board software you choose, you can minimise your bulletin board software cost so much so that you dont even have to pay a dime for it. In other words use an open source solution like phpbb or simple machines. If you want a more stable and powerfull solution use either VB which costs 160 for life time license or IPB which costs 190 for a life times license. It all depends on how you want your forum to be at the end of the day.

Thanks for the reply - appreciated. If I want to buy a server to host it myself - what server would I need and what would be the average price.

Many Thanks

Minister

I am no expert in setting up home servers to setup a site on that, for a starting forum people usually prefer that you buy a simple average hosting package from a reputed hosting firm, which should not cost you more than 10-20 dollars a month plus an additional 10 dollars an year for domain.

There are also the costs of getting a style, you are best off if you get a custom style for your forum as it really seperates your site from the rest. That can range from $0-$10,000+ you get what you pay for!

thanks all for the replies, nice to have the support - can anyone tell me how much a server costs to buy and/or what kind of spec it needs to be.

appreciate all the help.

Minister

$1,000. :cheesy: Or $10,000.


Minister, I will spec it out for you here, but there are several details you have to share.

a) how many people are on your network currently (that will be max ever to access your server)
b) do you have an already existing MS SQL server, that could be used to house this? (to reduce cost, just create new DB on server)
c) What kind of network do you run now? (network card type etc.

d) Do you have a server room with standard 19" racks?
e) Do you have Unix or Linux expertise inhouse?
f) Do you have a site license for Windows Server/SQL or per server?
g) everything else I cannot think of

Ultimately, you can do it with existing machines and Open Source software at no additional hard cost. What I mean by that is, you can take two or three not so hot Pentium III or 4 (or even less if you are brave) workstations, cluster them, using a small 100Megabit switch, load Linux, Apache, mySQL, phpBB (or other), and you have a system that will beat some commercial services every time.

Here is an article http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5690 I googled with "Linux cluser". Highschool kids built 8PC cluster with no Linux experience.

Of course, you don't need a cluster. The reason I was throwing it at you is because I don't know how big the user base will be and how heavy the usage. By all means, a single machine solution would be ultimate. Select a beafy desktop machine, load the same software as I talked about, "forget about it".

that was an excellent response - many thanks. I will run around and get the answers to your question as I am a bit on an 'I.T idiot'

Greatly appreciate your help

Minister