Starting A Small Forum?
 

I am interested in setting up a forum for my kids' school.

Basically just a place, kind of like PPOT, where parents and kids can talk, share info, ask about homework, make suggestions, complain bitterly, post pics, etc. Access will be restricted to parents and kids only. Appx 500 families and 100 staff so I speculate typical concurrent usage might be 5-10 people and peak might be 20-30? Very small.

Anyway - please give me a pointer or two on how to get started.
- What software? Simple is good, I don't have time for a second job as a DBA.
- Can I start this on an old spare PC (Dell circa 2004)? Or should I buy a newer one?
- Would like to run from my home internet connection, at first anyway. Broadband via Comcast. OK?
- Other points?

Yahoo groups?

http://groups.yahoo.com/start

If you're looking to keep it simple then hosting from home on your own hardware is the exact wrong place to start.

As suggested look into yahoo groups or if you are looking for Pelican Style go to #1 Free Forums - FreeForums.org - Create a free forum in minutes!.

Don't be surprised if you get little or no involvement, unless there have been a lot of people clamoring for it (and even then it is unlikely).

I tried setting up a Porsche (Porsche Paradise) forum up on Car Domain and got little responce.

Why in the world would you want to host your own?

One of my hosts, hostingmatters.com , has scripts that let you set up a forum in minutes. Super easy. I would assume most webhosting packages these days from major ISP included this.

Get a domain name, setup a hosting account, setup the forum, let DNS do its magic, bada boom bada bing, a couple hours and you've got a forum.

There are free forum services that will host for you (e.g. "invisionplus.net"). You can customize to your specs within parameters.

And there are commercial forums like this one (vBulletin), probably the most used on the internet. They provide the software on a yearly lease basis or outright purchase.

I would begin with a free forum and see how much traffic it generates. If it becomes popular, I would then migrate over to a commercial forum software solution. It will have more tech support and a wider base of users for customization (if needed), troubleshooting and assistance.

Sherwood

Don't forget PARF section, K.