Questions for ebado and anyone else who knows about forums.

[GoEhsan]

I want to create a website who's sole purpose is to be a forum for networking business majors and alumni at my school.

1) I know how to register a url, I know I need hosting, I've sort of learned how to make an HTML site with photoshop, but to make a forum do I need a script or something?

2) Does the bandwith usage change alot? I mean when people put on [img] it makes the hosts bandwith ussage go up right? What happens if I surpass the amount I payed for?

3) The school of buisness at my school has around 10,000 people is this gonna cost me an arm and leg?

4) I'm not interested in having ecommerce or video or anything fancy, just a homepage with a direct link to the forum so i can get an extra click for google ads. Well this really isn't a question, just thinking out loud, but would like some feedback.

Thanks!

[JensenBakura]

[quote=""DarthEhsan""]I want to create a website who's sole purpose is to be a forum for networking business majors and alumni at my school.

1) I know how to register a url, I know I need hosting, I've sort of learned how to make an HTML site with photoshop, but to make a forum do I need a script or something?

2) Does the bandwith usage change alot? I mean when people put on [img] it makes the hosts bandwith ussage go up right? What happens if I surpass the amount I payed for?

3) The school of buisness at my school has around 10,000 people is this gonna cost me an arm and leg?

4) I'm not interested in having ecommerce or video or anything fancy, just a homepage with a direct link to the forum so i can get an extra click for google ads. Well this really isn't a question, just thinking out loud, but would like some feedback.

Thanks![/quote]

My feedback:

I am in no way qualified, or have any experience, to help you in this matter in any way. In fact, any involvement on my part in this endeavour would only guarantee the finished product would be worse than any collaboration not involving me.

[badfo]

You need a MySQL database or two (normally come with hosting) and the actual forum script (vBulletin, phpBB like we have here, etc). Most hosting places have some of control panel to install a script for you (I know GoDaddy does), but if it doesn't, installing is as simple as uploading via FTP the script folder into the destination on your site where you want it and navigating to the install page.

All of this is in the manual for any forum script.

Edit: Don't worry about transfer limits. It costs about 7 bucks a month to get a ridiculous amount of transfer that you will never have to worry about.

[GoEhsan]

[quote=""ebado""]You need a MySQL database or two (normally come with hosting) and the actual forum script (vBulletin, phpBB like we have here, etc). Most hosting places have some of control panel to install a script for you (I know GoDaddy does), but if it doesn't, installing is as simple as uploading via FTP the script folder into the destination on your site where you want it and navigating to the install page.

All of this is in the manual for any forum script.

Edit: Don't worry about transfer limits. It costs about 7 bucks a month to get a ridiculous amount of transfer that you will never have to worry about.[/quote]

Awesome, this was exactly what I was looking for, thanks!