Forum Webhosting

General information

Many webmasters installed and started using forums on their sites over the last couple of years. As a result of the hugh interest, many web hosting companies have started supporting some of the most preferred bulletin boards or forum software scripts. However, not many web hosting companies have the special expertise needed to serve a forum and that is why I have researched the most reliable forum web hosting sites, free forum hosting sites, forum software scripts and rankings.

What is Forum Web Hosting?

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.[1] They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user and/or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible.

Forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; e.g. A single conversation is called a ‘thread’.

A forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure: a forum can contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics. Within a forum’s topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as wish to.

Depending on the forum set-up, users can be anonymous or have to register with the forum and then subsequently log in in order to post messages. Usually you do not have to log in to read existing messages.

From a technological standpoint, forums or boards are web applications managing user-generated content.

Forum software packages are widely available on the Internet and are written in a variety of programming languages, such as PHP, Perl, Java and ASP. The configuration and records of posts can be stored in text files or in a database. Each package offers different features, from the most basic, providing text-only postings, to more advanced packages, offering multimedia support and formatting code (usually known as BBCode). Many packages can be integrated easily into an existing website to allow visitors to post comments on articles.

Recently many webmasters installed and started using forums on their websites. Due to high demand, many webhosting companies have started supporting some of the most preferred bulletin boards available – phpBB, Simple Machines Forum, Invision Power Board and vBulletin to mention a few best.