I am looking to setup a small tech/business site for myself. I'd LIKE to have a forum a lot like this one. I guess this is called a "bulletin board system"? I was wondering what options I had. And what might be BEST to do. How to design it...

I know that BLOGS can be free and very professional (Like wordpress) so, I Might have wordpress "on" my site ... or LINKED to it maybe.

but I was looking at software like: "snitz" a free ware forum software. But I guess I'd have to host it myself if I used that.
Which IS a possibility, for a strictly small / non critical business population.

http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/Sni...000/snitz.html

then I looked briefly at a free website host that would provide a forum like "BraveNet" http://www.bravenet.com/webtools/forum/

would THAT be a good place to have a forum?
they'd also hold a website too I guess if I wanted.

I imagine I'd have a domain name of my own. on something like GoDaddy and if I just had mostly simple web pages. Is it good or practical for me to plan to have a "blog" that is on wordpress and linked to on my site? And same thing for a forum? Would it (could it) appear like it was PART of my website? Has any body DONE this here that can comment? Like if I had a few local members (small user/gaming community) and a few guys I work with directly who were tech's and or support staff... and we all can keep up to date with each other and help one another with needs and tech support. And I do mean literally like a local thing, one or two towns. As in once I had a customer, that customer could always contact me through the forum, if not just email me, or that customer could also possibly get help from other customers, etc.

it's just a basic community again, maybe like this one but much smaller.

is it practical to do it that way? I've never done it and I'm looking for opinions on how to do this best. I realize that "best" is a conditional and relative term. Relative to things like scale and money as well as objective. and other things I am only now considering.

Keep in mind too, yes, I may do things like use google's ad sense, and let google run ads there too (small marketing side to it). I may as well if I get a site up and running.

please advise or express opinions and experiences.