Earning Money

This is the first installment in a four part series about creating a forum and building it up. I have created many forums before and I have to say that it is one of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve had when working on the web. I don’t want people to think, though, that I am a forum guru. I’m not. But anyways…What I want to talk about in the first post is picking the right forum software. There are three softwares that I want to recommend, although I have only ever used two of them. However, because I am a believer in providing information and giving choices, I’ll give yo three.

• vBulletin: This software is a great software and is considered the ‘best’ software to use for forums. I use vBulletin for one of my own forums and I have to say it has an amazing system. There are some brilliant plug ins and a great support forum to get help on anything. If you’re looking for a top of the line, really respectable looking forum, I recommend this one. The only downfall is that it is extremely expensive to get an owned copy. However, if you intend on keeping the forum for two years, don’t get leased.
• IPB: This forum software is one that I have never used before. IPB is another one of those forum softwares that costs a considerable amount of money; however, I have heard a lot of great success from people that have used this software. Unfortunately, I have not had the privilege of using this software, so I am unable to give you a lot of information about it. But, I can say that it is one of the top three forum softwares that are currently on the net.
• PHPBB: This final software is the best (in my opinion) free software. For a long time, it wasn’t all that respected because it was free and it was just not the best software to use. However, with their recent release of version 3, PHPBB has become a brilliant software to use. PHPBB3 is one of the top forum softwares and I use it personally on one of my forum. The admin panel is wonderfully created and it gives you control over a lot of aspects. If you don’t have the money to get vBulletin, I highly recommend you go with this.

If you can’t guess, my top favorite softwares are vBulletin and phpBB. These two softwares are just the better of the two (from what I have heard) and if I had to make a forum, it would be with either phpBB or vBulletin. Picking the software is extremely important. You want something that is safe, that gets a lot of security and version updates so that you can guarantee never to get hacked. Creating a forum is hard work, but don’t make the first mistake and pick the wrong software. And definitely don’t pick a software that is not top of the line. Good luck and stay tuned for tomorrow’s post about making your forum grow.

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