Forum Web Hosting

Internet forum derived from the email groups and discussion boards. It is the oldest way of electronic communication, which evolved in 1965 at MIT together with email. The users of the first email have noticed, that the responses to the original post should be threaded for easier reading. If the email goes public, it looks like discussion board where everyone type their answers quoting the previous message or the initial one. The same format of information is kept in contemporary forums.
Contemporary forums allow much more actions. One of the main features of any forum is private messaging allowing users to communicate privately with each other without writing emails. Another feature is the profile management where user can describe his interests and personal details, add a picture called ‘avatar’, add any personal messaged, allow showing his latest actions in forum.Forum hosting is based on easy to manage database. The forum software is usually an open source and free to use, but there are some commercial forum software as well. The majority of forum software uses LAMP hosting, which means Linux OS, Apache server, MySQL database and PHP programming language. Choosing the forum web hosting these main 4 features should be kept in mind.

Why Forum Hosting

There are lots of online services which offer forum set-up for free. The main problem of such free forum set up is no control over it. That means user cannot modify the general setting and solve main problems at his own back end. That’s why forum software should be hosted in a professional hosting company and server. It allows full control over the information and user management, which is essential in building a quality community.

Own forum hosting is also needed in case the owner decides to move from one forum software to another, change the look of the forum and even layout.

If the forum is just an additional feature to the original website, it can be easily moved to the domain forum.domain.com to use different layouts and designs and make it independent from the main domain content.

Forum hosting plans depend on the scare of the community. If it is small and closed, shared hosting would be a convenient solution. If the forum is public and big – the VPS hosting solutions are needed. If hosting becomes extremely busy and big, cloud hosting solutions should be looked for. The communities usually react sensitively to any down-time of a forum, therefore hosting plan and resources should be selected with care and responsibility.

Forum Hosting in Host1Plus

Host1Plus is glad to present the group of services related to a professional and amateur forum hosting. If the community is small, shared hosting service can be chosen, however we highly recommend ordering the VPS web hosting which is cheap and affordable for the web forum, which is public and has a goal to become big. Forum is the dynamic website which can consume monthly data load, disk space and CPU in just a few minutes, if some controversial topic or pictures will be posted. In order to prevent such data usage which can result the crash of your hosting plan, we recommend to host forum on a VPS or even dedicated server.

The basic plan for any forum application hosting at Host1Plus is Cloud VPS Level 6 with 3.6 GHz dedicated CPU, 1536MB Dedicated RAM, disk space of 60GB, Network speed – 20 Mbps. In case community grows so fast, you will need to add the additional RAM and CPU. If your community like sharing photos and attachments which are hosted on the server, you may probably need to add additional disk space.

Host1Plus can offer to host desired forum software in both Linux and Windows servers. Linux is more popular option, however some forum applications support Microsoft SQL database, therefore it can be easily installed and run on Windows server. This option is useful for dedicated Windows server users. The forum is not only for entertainment purposes, but also for internal business communities, therefore Windows hosting may be used for forum hosting.

Some forum projects may require dedicated servers. Host1Plus has data centers in Germany, Lithuania, UK, USA, Netherlands and Singapore, therefore can suggest an acceptable solution for a dedicated server in a location near to the customer. Dedicated server can be configured by the customer’s administrator. Host1Plus also offer an extra care support service and optimize a dedicated server for the customer. Please consult with our support if you are looking for dedicated server solutions.

If cloud solution is needed, please contact Host1Plus customer support for a solution.

Features of Forum Hosting

Forum hosting require some general features as majority of forum software can be called in LAMP hosting with Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Sometimes particular forum software has some specific requirements, which can be added later.

Features of any forum hosting:

• Forum software Auto-installer applications which allow easily install and manage the desired application.

• Easy to use site administration tools (choose on demand as few control panels are available both free and paid).

• PHP 5.0 supported.

• Linux and Windows OS.

• Support various databases – PostgreSQL, SQLite, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server

• Free SSH (Jailed-Shell) Access.

• Additional security applications.

Every VPS hosting plan also contains additional features which help managing all the project:

• Multiple Domains and databases.

• Multiple Webmail Applications.

• POP and IMAP email management together.

• E-mail Anti-Virus Protection.

• Email Forwarding & Auto-Responders features.

• Detailed Website Statistics and Raw Error Logs.

• Website backup tools.

• Live support 24/7 in English, Russian and Lithuanian via email, live chat, FAQ and toll-free phone calls in USA and UK.

Additional features such as additional space or network speed can be added for the additional cost on demand any time. Contact our support for help if there are some specific server requirements, not listed in our website.

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