Building the Blues - How to Start a Community from Scratch: Forum Software

In my previous article, I made a final decision on the topic of my forum and registered the domain BluesBoard.net. Though not my preferred domain, this was the closest match without becoming overly obscure or difficult to remember. The key thing in my mind when looking for a domain to front my project was to choose something which was both related to the topic, catchy and relatively easy to remember.

Next, I am going to plan out what I want to offer and what I hope to achieve in the long-term from my community. The reason I have chosen to do this now is because the next major task is to select which forum platform I am going to use to build my community upon. If I wish to expand and offer a full portal in the near future, then certain software will lend itself better to fulfilling this task – the last thing I want to do is be looking at a lengthy and difficult move to another platform in say six months time.

I really want to focus on the artists that have shaped the blues and the landmark tracks and albums. However, I would also like to make a section dedicated to those that enjoy playing, whether that is professionally or just as a hobby. I’m one of the latter, and whilst I’ve still got some way to go before I make it on stage, I would dearly love to get involved with likeminded people and share recordings and new ideas. This would imply that I need some way for users to upload their own tracks and possibly images as well, such as photographs from concerts they attended or performed. I would like a certain level of integration with the forum, so I am either looking at a highly configurable platform that will allow me to drop in an image gallery and upload function, or having a custom script written for my specific purposes. As I am looking to do this on a relatively low budget, the former is far more preferable – I know a little about PHP and SQL, though not nearly enough to create a full module.

Another obvious step for me is creating a custom theme, and whilst I don’t mind going minimalist at all, I feel that a graphical element is required to catch the attention of the casual browser. Again, I am limiting my options of forum platform down to a handful as this eliminates any with little in the way of skinning possibilities.

The idea of a portal is quite appealing, and the ability to post news, reviews, the latest releases and so forth would be a valuable addition to the community. Admittedly this will take extra work and will make the customising a little trickier, but having looked at the competition, feel it is essential to give my forum a little something extra.

My main concern is the vast following a number of similar forums has built up over the course of the past few years. Though many of these forums have nothing spectacular about them, they have established their presence and have member counts in the several hundred to several thousand regions. Whereas I cannot claim to be up there with the biggest and the best for sometime, giving myself as much of a boost as possible will be a critical factor in determining whether this will be a glorious success or a catastrophic failure – I would much rather it was the former!

With that in mind, I went to look at the possible forum platforms I could use. Without wanting to spend a small fortune, my search yielded the usual suspects – vBulletin, phpBB, Invision and so forth. Vanilla is another impressive piece of software that I have always admired, though I am worried as to whether or not its lightweight nature will be a suitable choice for the plans I have for my forum.

The obvious choice at this stage is vBulletin, which has the option of the excellent vBadvanced or vBPortal, each of which can handle a wide range of extras such as photo galleries. Having seen vBadvanced in action on a number of forums I frequent, this option is currently my preferred choice. The only drawback is the initial outlay - £48.00 (Around $100) plus VAT for a one year lease or £91.00 (Around $180) plus VAT for an owned licence. If I wanted to use PhotoPost as my integrated image gallery, I would be looking at an additional £50.00 (Around $100) or so for a licence. It will be a while before I have the traffic statistics to sell advertising space and text links, so as much as the vBulletin platform is preferred, it may be just a little too rich for my blood at this stage.

PhpBB also has a number of portal systems on offer, including ezPortal, MX Portal and phpBB CMS. Though these offer more limited functionality, going down this route would be far more inexpensive and would also cater adequately for my portal requirements.

Unfortunately, Vanilla is looking to be lacking the all-important add-ons. This doesn’t surprise me in the least considering it was designed to be a no-frills, lightweight forum solution.

Invision also looks like a reasonable choice, though the licensing fees were a little more than I was looking to spend. A one year licence comes in at a very reasonably $69.95, though an owned license is $185.00, which is on par with vBulletin. Additionally, an image gallery would be another $65.00 on top of that, leaving me with costs that are comparable to a full vBulletin installation with extras.

In my next article I will (hopefully!) have made a final decision on my software platform. Investigation has thrown up excellent choices in the form of vBulletin and Invision, though the free nature of phpBB has proven to be equally appealing. However, I do feel that phpBB may be lacking the security of its rival software and the limited skinning and administration capabilities may be enough to put me off.

So, to round up – nothing spent this time around, though a good four hours spent looking at various forum software solutions, licensing fees and modifications.

If you have any suggestions or input, feel free to let me know here and I will gladly take your considerations on board. Additionally, if you think there is a nice piece of software that I have missed out, let me know and I will take a look before making my final decision sometime later this week.

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