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Best Forum hosting
Whether you need a Forum Hoster for vBulletin phpBB, SMF or another solution, hosting.com has got you covered! Your site comes hosted on our ultra-reliable, high performance SwiftServer platform. Choose our Turbo Servers for up to 20X faster page loads.
phpBB, MyBB and SMF are just a few of the popular forum solutions you can auto-install to your account. Have another solution in mind? With unbeatable PHP and MySQL support, rest assured you’ll experience top-notch performance.
Whether this is your first forum or your 100th, our 24/7/365 Guru Crew staff has the knowledge to answer your forum web hosting questions. Just contact our team via live chat, phone or email! Get started now risk-free thanks to our Money-Back Guarantee. You’re going to love our forum hosting
What is a Forum?
A forum can be referred to as a number of different names including a bulletin board, discussion group or a message board. Regardless of what you call it, these type of sites give its members the ability to post topics (called threads) in an organized manner all based around upon a central theme. A forum encourages its members to read and respond to these posted threads. You can start a forum on basically any topic you can think of and create a community of users around it.
Forums are organized into an intuitive hierarchy. Most forums have a central theme and then are broken down into particular topics or categories. Each of these categories are then broken down into threads where the forum members actually post and converse.
For example, you may want to launch a sports themed forum. The categories keep be each sport you want your visitors to be able to discuss like basketball, baseball, hockey, football and soccer. Your members would then start threads within each of the categories about relevant topics. It’s also common to see “off topic” categories on a forum where your members can discuss topics that are not related to the overall forum theme.
Forums differ from chat rooms in that the conversations are not real-time. Rather users are encouraged to come back and visit often with their posts easily and readily available for future retrieval. Like chat, forums also usually allow for one on one conversations among members. A forum generally uses messaging very similar to an email format for this communication, which is not real-time.
Forum user roles
In addition to the members who sign up for your site who regularly participate in conversations, there are a number of other roles that you'll typically see in a forum. The most common roles are:
- Moderator -- The administrator has the permission to approve, delete and move threads as necessary. They ensure that the forum is free from spam and that users are abiding to any rules that have been set forth for the bulletin board. They may also answer any questions that the members have posted. Their job is essentially to ensure that the forum continues to run smoothly from a front end perspective.
- Administrator -- The user who starts the forum and is designated as the user in charge of the technical details of the forum. This includes running backups and the database. The administrator can often times also be a moderator for the forum.
- Guest -- An unregistered visitor to your forum. Guests can typically view the posts, but are unable to join in on the conversation until they sign up for an account.
Additional Forum hoster features
- Private Threads -- This allows only specific forum members to view and/or participate in a thread. This is a popular way to allow forum moderators to speak with one another without being visible to other forum members.
- User Dashboard -- This is where your members can view their latest posts, see the most recent news, view their messages, update their profile and much more.
- Emoticons -- Just as you can send an emoji in a text message, forums can allow you to post emoticons in a post. They allow you to express an emotion in graphical format.
- Signature -- Many forums can be used as a means for promoting a business or website as well as to get a backlink. A signature can show up at the bottom of every post by a user automatically. Users can format their signature within their control panel to showcase a specific link and/or content. Many forums require a set amount of legitimate user posts before giving a user signature capability as a means to prevent abuse or spam.
- Polls -- What better way to get feedback about how to improve your website and/or forum than by asking your forum members? It's also a great way to generate interaction among users.
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Best Forum software hosting options
vBulletin
vBulletin is the world’s leading forum software solution.
phpBB
Intuitive, high powered and flexible forum software.
MyBB
Forum software with a well designed and easy-to-use interface.
Flatboard
Lightweight Forum Software
Additional Forum hosting software alternatives & options
AEF
AEF is an abbreviation for Advanced Electron Forum. AEF makes it easy build a completely customized forum with its user-friendly control panel and wide selection of free themes.
bbPress
Add forum capability to your existing WordPress website with bbPress. bbPress users get the benefit of a lightweight solution that doesn’t slow down your WordPress website.
Beehive
Beehive is an open source forum software with many great features. Beehive is highly customizable and can be configured to suit your needs.
Carbon Forum
Carbon Forum is a high powered and lightweight bulletin board solution. Carbon Forum is PHP-based.
Discourse
Discourse is an easy-to-use forum solution loaded with the most modern features. Discourse is extremely versatile meaning you can also use it as a mailing list and a chat room.
ElkArte
ElkArte is a high powered forum software solution. It features a number of modern features designed to meet the communication needs of modern communities.
Flarum
Flarum is a forum solution designed to be fast and easy to use. Its streamlined interface means you can spend more time discussing and less time clicking through a complicated solution.
Flatboard
A Simple, Lightweight, Modern and fast Flat-File Forum, using Json and Markdown or BBcode.
FluxBB
FluxBB is a lightweight and high powered forum solution. It focuses on providing key forum functionality as opposed to slower and bloated alternatives loaded with a number of unnecessary features.
FUDforum
FUDforum stands for Fast Uncompromising Discussion Forum. This free and open source software allows you to quickly generate forum web pages as well as manage mailing lists and build a community.
Harmony
Add an online community to your Drupal site.
IPB
Invision Power Board (IPB) is a message board solution to help you build a successful community from the ground up. IPB is flexible and most importantly, easy to manage.
Kunena
Add forum functionality to your Joomla site with ease using Kunena! Kunena is easy to use, high performance and will always be free!
LayerBB
LayerBB is a high powered forum solution. Create your online community quickly and easily with LayerBB.
miniBB
miniBB is the “minimalist bulletin board” software solution. As you would expect, miniBB is forum software that is lightweight, user-friendly and offers high performance.
my little forum
my little forum is an open source software that offers the simplicity of a traditional internet forum. It uses PHP and MySQL to display messages in the classic threaded view.
MyBB
MyBB is a forum managed, developed, and supported by volunteers. Since 2002 when it was created, the MyBB Group has focused on developing the best possible forum software.
PBBoard
PBBoard is forum software and short for Power Bulletin Board. PBBoard is an elegant solution that is both easily customizable as well as loaded with features.
Phorum
Phorum is a PHP-based, open source message board software solution. Phorum is high performance and offers a wide range of modules allowing users to customize their forum to their specific liking.
phpBB
phpBB is a free and open source forum software solution designed for ease of use, power, and customization. phpBB is known for offering extensive support for their users.
PunBB
PunBB is a forum software solution focused on being lightweight. It is a much faster alternative to other graphic heavy forum software.
SMF
Simple Machines Forum (SMF) is the powerful and easy to use community forum written in PHP. Use SMF to start interesting discussions with your visitors on your website!
TangoBB
TangoBB makes it easy to build a user-friendly and simple bulletin board (forum) style website. TangoBB is very customizable thanks to its powerful theme management ability.
Unclassified Newsboard
A forum solution focused on making tasks easier for users and you, the forum administrator.
UseBB
UseBB is a lightweight, Open Source forum solution. UseBB was designed specifically for ease of use as well as simplicity for all users.
Vanilla Forum
Vue.js is a composable, easy-to-use and high powered Model-View-ViewModel Framework. Vue.js is especially useful when it comes to developing interactive web interfaces.
vBulletin
This forum solution was developed with a focus on security, powerful admin features and speed in mind. vBulletin is the choice of 40,000+ online communities.
Viscacha
Viscacha is a forum solution with a built in content management system. Viscacha is easily extendible with a robust system compatible with plugins and components.
XenForo
XenForo is a commercially-based forum software that creates compelling engagements among community members. It brings a fresh perspective to forum software because it is a relatively new solution.
XMB
XMB is a customizable PHP-based forum software. Growing online communities can benefit from the easy setup and long list of features included in this lightweight solution.
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