Forum web hosting- Forum web hosting refers to a web host that specializes in, or at least offers, specialized forum hosting plans. Like other types of web hosting, forum web hosting may be better at or less able to meet your needs. Read on for more information about Forum web hosting and why we recommend iPage web hosting for the best forum web hosting.
What Is a Forum?
Like every other use of the word forum, the concept of an online forum can trace its roots back to the public assembly place in ancient Roman cities from which the word forum comes. Whether physical or virtual, a forum is a meeting place for individuals to engage in discussion.
While physical forums allow people to talk to each other face-to-face, online forums are asynchronous. That is, unlike chat rooms, forum posts are generally not read and responded to in real time: they are archived for later viewing by other forum members. While this lacks immediacy, it allows ongoing interaction between people who may be on opposite sides of the world, without them having to stay up or get up in the night in order to communicate.
The preservation of posts and division of posts into threads allows many separate “conversations” to go on simultaneously. The arrangement of a forum is hierarchical, and often allows for some user preference choices about how they want to view and/or receive posts.
The topics are usually defined in some way by the nature of the forum. A forum about eating disorders will have different sorts of topics and posts than a forum that provides technical support for a technology product.
What Features Should a Forum Have?
A forum should have an easy way to set up rules and policies and an easy way to enforce them. This may mean the use of CAPTCHA to screen for bot responses, the use of moderation, and/or the ability to ban users. The type of security necessary will partly depend on whether the forum is open or by invitation or otherwise confined to a well-defined group that has other social or professional connections, in which case spamming, and rude “trolls” will be less likely.
Syndication is a useful feature for a forum so that members do not have to continually return to the site to read posts (unless they wish to do so). Depending on the type of forum, you may or may not want to allow emoticons, polls, private messages, chat among members, a registration, and a system to record and/or reward level of use.
Good support is important to being able to get set up, get support, and upgrade when the time is right. Also look for security, backup, and uptime information from hosts you are considering.
A choice of forum scripts can be useful, unless you simply know exactly what you want. phpBB, IPB, and SMF are popular for Linux servers, but if you want to work on a Windows server, make sure to choose an ASP-based forum and if you want particular features, you may wish to research forum scripts before making a choice. You may also need to have databases to support your forum, and the type will partly depend on whether you’re using Linux hosting or Windows hosting.
Now that you know what forum hosting is and the basic concepts of forum hosting, you will need to find the best forum hosting there is. A lot of web hosting companies offer forum software but we think iPage forum hosting offers the best forum hosting. Their web hosting plan is all around solid and you can run a successful forum site. Plus with our iPage coupon you can get iPage web hosting for only $3.50 a month (2 or 3 year plan) instead of the normal iPage price of $6.95 a month.