Looking for a free forum with hosting, and will teach me.....

[sgtevmckay]

This topic has not been risen in the last couple of years and I would raise it again.

I have been tasked with finding a forum with hosting, and must be free to start, and be able to teach me what I need to know.

At the moment I have no full time server and the full admins do not have the time, or the resources, currently to lay down funds, so it must be free and hosted.

I have just been directed to Forumer, but would appreciate a broader sense of what is available out there.

Any suggestions?
If so; Please list site, and any known limitations.

I am looking for a quick turn around to get a forum that should have started years ago.

So any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

[housetier]

What is it that you need to learn? What topics should this forum teach?

[mouser]

if you look around you shall see we use here Simple Machines Forum: http://www.simplemachines.org/
i like it. and would have no hesitate recommending it for a big site..

for a small company site you might consider something else, maybe see: http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=7478.0

for wiki there are a lot of good choices.  one nice one is dokuwiki: http://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki

[edit: link corrected -- thanks ewemoa]

[sgtevmckay]

Well I have been trying to keep a lid on it, but in order for folks to understand our needs, I guess I will have to drop it.

Rainmeter is fireing up again, and has never had a structured share forum. Raineers have been stuck sharing and helping as they can on sites like deviant art, win customize, etc.

Since I am no real programmer by any means, I would be looking ot learn everything I need to know on how to setup, manipulate, and manage a forum site.
I will need to know every thing, as I wwould be one of 3 volunteer admins.

Since Rainmeter is a large community, albeit scattered to the winds, once it coalesces together, The forum will need the ability to handle a bunch of graphics (ie. screenshots and this kind of thing).

So space is probably a prime consideration.

I have absolutely no knowledge of php, but understand that it is simple once you know, and I can be a fairly quick study.

As a final note here. I have been so impressed with DC here, that I would base the service, support, and funding system on the Donation Coder format, if at all possible, and I think this would work out great for some of the more dedicated Raineers, that spend unholy amounts of time developing Configs for rainmeter, a directed donation system is something that you folks here put into place, and seems to work incredible well. Plus the idea of funds to get an independent forum in time, and matbe some flow to the real programmers behind the scenes.

One pain pill instead of two todat, and I do not feel like a free floating dingbat at the moment.

[sgtevmckay]

What is it that you need to learn? What topics should this forum teach?

Missed this in the last post, please be patient with me.

The site will eventually cover all training, support, and postings concerning Rainmeter.

[rgdot]

InvisionFree is a sort of similar to Forumer but haven't used either because when possible I try to avoid free hosting only because I am just not sure no matter how good previous experiences may have been.
If it was just hosting I have extra bandwidth and space with a good host that I am willing to provide for free for good sites but I won't go further and spam.

[app103]

Something you need to keep in mind with most of the free forum hosting providers like Forumer (I have a small Forumer forum, myself)

While you can customize a lot of the look of it, you usually can not install any sort of plugins.

Another thing to consider is that you can't take your database with you, should you outgrow their service and decide to move the forum to your own hosting. They don't allow you to have a copy of it, so you are locked to their service and you will lose your entire forum and all posts if the service ever shuts down or if they delete your account for any reason (or no reason).

What you need is a free (or low cost?) host that will allow you to install your own forum, in which you can have a copy of the database, install plugins, and do anything else you may want or need to do related to running your forum.

That might not be as easy to find, free, and the free hosts that do allow that, don't usually have a good reputation for reliability or support.

[sgtevmckay]

Agreed and thank you.

I figured I would explore the free possibilities, before I explored the paid ones.
I would run this for about a week and see if anything comes out of the wood work, otherwise I may have to go back to Rainy and ask for some of his hosting space, I had hoped against it, but I will do what I have to do.

[sri]

vBulletin is hands down, the best forum script be it free or paid.