Hosting a Forum

I'd like to host my own forum for my group of outdoor activity friends someday. I've hosted and made a css and html website before. I noticed that making a forum with php is very different. What do I need to program and host a forum? I found this -> https://www.phpbb.com/ It seems to be a popular forum hosting site. Is it possible to design a forum similar to the Org with phpbb? I like the Org's layout, design, and how it doesn't have any ads. I guess it doesn't have ads because the forum is a paid one. What tool and hosting site were used to make and host this forum?

Hi Shaka_Khan

phpBB is a popular choice. There are a lot of other free forums though, including Simple Machines and MyBB. Often there not a awful lot between them for most people and it comes down to what you are used to and which styles you like.

It should be possible to skin a phpBB board, or pretty much any forum, to be like The Org although styling is not my forte.

The Org runs on vBulletin 4, which is professional forum software. I wouldn't recommend it over the open source alternatives that are now available, even if it was free.

We run on a dedicated server as The Org is a big forum in terms of posts and members, but for a smaller forum for a few friends you could easily get away with shared hosting, which is much cheaper and generally easier to run. Often hosts have auto install scripts for various forum softwares so you could set up a forum with little more than a click.

We don't have any ads as we are now self-hosted. We used to have plenty when we were with the late Atomic Gamer but fortunately we are in a position to get rid of them now.

HTH.

I also agree phpBB is popular choice.