Info about starting a forum

by ws_jessica

So, you decided to create a forum for your new site. Now comes the hard part: which forum software to use and where to find it!

There are lots of choices; what might be good for your site could be entirely wrong for someone else's. Here are some guidelines on how to decide which forum software to look for.

Besides chatting of course. Do you plan on having download areas on it? If so, you will need to find forum software that allows you to have attachments. Otherwise you may end up having to use a free file/image host anytime you or one of your member's want to show off your latest creation or share a model you made.

Alot of sims-related sites have a forum where visitors can gather to chat or to meet/talk to the site owner. Other sims-related sites, such as ModtheSims2, Insimenator, GaySimsClub2, Wicked Sims, and others have a mainpage (or "portal") that lead everyone to the forum, which is where all their activity takes place.

If you plan on having all of your downloads on your mainpage, and then having a forum for chat, you won't need to look for software capable of doing complicated things like attachments and subcategories. The complicated things aren't necessary for that type of forum, but can be considered an added bonus.

If you plan on having all of your downloads (along with your discussion) on your forum, then you will need to look for software that either has extensive features "out of the box" (clean--without modifications), or a forum software that you can alter/customize to do what you want it to do.

Obviously, if your focus isn't the forum (meaning all of your downloads are on your homepage), this doesn't apply to you. But for those of you who have decided you want your focus to be on your forum, you will need to decide whether you want to use a forum software that has a "portal" available or if you want to create a normal homepage.

What is a portal? A portal is an addition to the normal forum software that acts as an "entrance" page for your visitors. It normally has things like your forum's stats, a login box, your latest threads, your affiliates, a poll, etc. If you have been to GSC or Insim you should have seen their portal page before you entered the actual forum (unless you have the actual forum bookmarked). It is best to decide this ahead of time; if you try to add a portal later on, it can be quite tricky.

If you decide you want to do a normal homepage, there are lots of places online for you to find free layouts, free fonts, free scripts, etc to make your homepage unique. You can find tutorials here on MySimSite that will assist you in that process too.

Well now that you have made some initial decisions, you need to go look for the forum software and try to choose between each one. Don't worry! We have a help page for that too Forum Software Choices.