Advice on starting a new forum?

[Kickbutt]

I am not sure if this is the right place to post this but oh well:

I'm looking to start a forum. It could potentially be big, but I would prefer not to spend any money on it, or at least as cheaply as possible. So please dont tell me about the vBulletin deluxe plan on a $200 server.

Advice on:
Server
Software (not sure if that is the right term, but i mean like Invision or vBulletin)
Rules
Anything else you can think of

Would be greatly apreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[skylight]

For forum script, my preference will be vBulletin ($160), Invision ($185), phpBB (free), maybe you want to try simplemachines.org (free)

Hosting, you can try to get a big share hosting plan ($5 - $10 per month), when your forum grows bigger, move to VPS plan ($30 - $50 per month), when it grows even bigger, then move to dedicated server.

[hype]

Dedicated would be preferable for big forums and vBulltein attracts ppl as professional forum...

[Kickbutt]

Ok. Il check them out.

Any other suggestions?

[hype]

ok, tell us about what kinda forum will that be?

[Kickbutt]

oh I am thinking about starting a forum for my grade at school. We have about 110 people in our grade, so if other people come too probably a max of 150 people.

Pretty much an 'anything' forum, so topic suggestions (General Chat, Games ect) would be great.

[hype]

If starting for personal I'll suggest IPB 2.0.3 cause they have huge colections of fun mods and rpg for you guys to play like Army System, RPG Inferno, Munjpet, ibProArcade, Kenka, Unreal RPG etc... And a normal server from neonhq will be good enough... That will not require dedicated and maybe try to get huge bandwidth...

[Kickbutt]

Ah. Ok, thanks a lot.

Any rules/topic ideas?

[TheUnforgiven1]

I have invision, BUT I am using an older version so its free you just need to dig it up somewhere. PHPBB2 is decent, but I prefer how much you can customize IPB, I LOVE VB but I cant afford it

[hype]

I know just the place to get vBulletin free... hehe... Topics can be spam topic or chatting topics like counting to ... with some stupid text below, maybe talk about your grade, stuff like that... Rules would definitely no porn... You can easily get rules by copying from other forums and change a bit...