Starting a online forum

[fahim1rocks]

I am really new to this and would really appreciate some insight on the whole process. I would like to start a online forum for depressed people seeking help. I bought the domain depressionsociety.com. Are there pre made forum interfaces which takes away all the effort or do I have to hire a developer and develop everything from scratch? I want a modern and minimal look. To be honest I am not a big fan of how banglagamer looks.

After I have built the site, how do I get the users to make new threads and post since the user base will be very little?

And lastly how much is it possible to earn on average from banner ads assuming the site has around 4k daily visitors.
I would really appreciate if the administrators of banglagamer gave some details about their experience.

[Badhon_raj]

take a look at xenforo.
it costs about $150 for the license.

for free alternative, check phpBB.

if you managed to get google adsence, then 4k visitor might earn you server cost. If not, then you'll have to pay from your wallet.

[fahim1rocks]

take a look at xenforo.
it costs about $150 for the license.

for free alternative, check phpBB.

if you managed to get google adsence, then 4k visitor might earn you server cost. If not, then you'll have to pay from your wallet.

Which one would be better, Xenforo or Invision Power Board? Accorting to what I read on the internet xenforo isn't a complete package and has a lot of add ons that I have to buy. Is it true? And do they support online chat?

[Badhon_raj]

all of the forum software has addon/extension/plugin for additional functionality. Including every single functionality in the base/core package will just make it bloatware.

I don't know if any of the forum software support chat by default. But every single one of them should have plugin/add-on available for that.

Personally I don't like IP Board much. Don't have experience with it either. So can't tell for sure how it compares with xenforo.

[ShouravBR]

Google "forum software", you will get a list of free/commercial forum solutions. Try to view some comparisons like https://www.thetoptens.com/best-forum-software/ . Some lightweight/miminal solutions are punBB, simple machine forum or BBPress (from the creators of WordPress).

Developing from scratch is not the best option, forums/blogs are filled with spammers. Personally I like the open source solutions, they have customizations & are popular too. Also php/mysql is a very popular server hosting environment you can get very competitive hosting rates. And scale up as needed.

Start with basic hosting and move up as needed. Select the forum solution and hire an expert to customize the look & feel to your needs.