Hosting for forums

[Shaikar]

I have a need for some new forums for a game club, problem is I have not much idea of where to start with hosting. Last time I paid for hosting was about a decade ago so I'm assuming everything I knew is wrong (and/or misremembered), so are there any recommendations on hosts, things I should read first etc?

My googling has mainly turned up a lot of shifty looking sites promising UNLIMITED FREE everything, and that sounds like a lot of shit to me...

Requirements aren't huge, only about 30 people or so and I suspect only a few of them will actually ever post anything, so I'm doing this more to relearn how the tubes work than anything else.

TIA

[Cue1*]

Are you talking about picking up hosting of your own or just using someone else's server?

Most free forums are free, with limited functions and a long ass url.

I personally like PHPBB and it's free, so a good place to start. I suppose it really matters what you need it for and what you like.

[EntroX]

for that number of users just get an account on BlueHost, its one of the few "reputable" cheap shared hosting providers, i highly doubt they will annoy you with the kind of load you would be having.

and yeah, use phpBB, its pretty solid on its own. if you need a hand setting things up just let me know and i'll give you a hand.

[Warpedmind125]

If you know basic linux management, Amazon AWS provides basically everything you need free for a year, then pretty cheap after that (Micro Instance + 8Gb storage + External IP). I used that and PHPBB for a game club as well, and its worked wonderfully for me so far. Only issue is the documentation for AWS is a little spotty, so startup can be confusing.

[lubica]

for that number of users just get an account on BlueHost, its one of the few "reputable" cheap shared hosting providers, i highly doubt they will annoy you with the kind of load you would be having.

and yeah, use phpBB, its pretty solid on its own. if you need a hand setting things up just let me know and i'll give you a hand.

Regarding Bluehost, as my company uses them and I'm currently dealing with a minor shitstorm due to it, it has been recently added to a number of anti-spam blacklists including spamcop.net and trend-micro's own blacklist. After searching their forums, it seems they've been having this problem for the past 2 weeks or so and I'm faced with the various known and unknown horrors of switching hosting companies, which I did once, 4 years a go and still have nightmares of unreachable e-mails and DNS conflicts.

Currently looking into finding a good replacement for Bluehost if they don't manage to resolve the issue.

[IceBlock]

Consider a cheap VPS provider.

[Drakma]

I could hook you up if there's not a lot of traffic.