Among the free hosting offerings available are free forum hosting opportunities. If someone signs up for this type of hosting plan it allows him or her to set up a discussion forum. This article explains some of the basics of free forum hosting.
How Does Free Forum Hosting Work?
There are at least two completely different types of free forum hosting:
- One type of free forum hosting is offered as the lowest level of service by a hosting company that also provides more products and/or services through an advanced hosting plan or upgrades.
- The other type of free forum hosting is possible through free open source software that the forum host can develop and host on his or her own server.
Free Forum Hosting as an Introductory Service
One example of free forum hosting as an introductory service is FreeForums.org. Although the forum must show an advertisements and copyright, this company offers a number of features for free, for example, a customized administration panel and numerous styles and customizations. The hosting service offers 99.9% uptime, unlimited bandwidth, a recovery console, ongoing upgrades, sub-domain usage, and traffic logs. Special forum features include the ability to warn users and temporarily ban users, to create sub-forums, and to provide instant registration.
Other features are only available through paid upgrades. These include the ability to use your own domain name instead of a sub-domain, removal of the copyright, and the ability to park domain names.
The advanced hosting option is another way to be free of the limitations and the restrictions of the free version. For a monthly fee, ads and copyright notices are removed from your forum, forums under 5 MB in size qualify for free transfer service, and you are able to provide your own ads on your forum, if you would like to do so. Advanced hosting provides FTP access to more styles, access to the database in order to make backups on your own schedule, and the ability to both create a website around your forum, as well as to create multiple forums and/or websites.
Free Forum Hosting Through Open Source Software
For those who want free, open source software to host themselves, VanillaForums.org is an option. Its available for download and customization, and there is free community support through a forum. Upgrades since version 2 was released in July 2010, have included three point updates in August, six in September, three in October, two in November, and one in the beginning of December. For a fee, one can have assistance in the form of customization and implementation, support and maintenance, and training and consultation. However, an adept developer can simply take charge and take the software development in any direction he or she pleases, creating customizations and specializations to fit the particular type of forum desired.
Free Forum Hosting Through Your Current Web Host
If you are already using a web hosting service that provides some type of one-click install, it is very likely that they have a free forum software that you can simply install. This is a great way to host your forum for free, just add it along with your website. Having a forum is a great way to allow visitors to interact with one another, for users to leave reviews, requests, or to discuss issues. A forum will also allow you to post regular updates about things that are going on with your website or even with your company in general. A forum is more personal than a blog and makes it easy for users to find a specific topic and make a comment or get more information. Free forum hosting provides neutral ground for visitors to discuss a wide range of topics.
Numerous free forum hosting options are available. Take a little time to do some research and find out which free forum option will best meet the needs of your company, customers, and website visitors. If you are building your forum first and then want to try and find a free hosting service to host your forum, be sure to find a free hosting service that will support whichever free forum service you choose to use to create the forum.
There are several options for free forum hosting. Do some research, read some forum hosting reviews, and talk to other webmasters that have experience with hosting a forum to get an idea of which forum hosting options will best meet your needs.