Forums like nightscrawlers

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BlueDiskJockey
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Forums like nightscrawlers

Post by BlueDiskJockey »

i was wondering if anyone knows how to get a site going like nightscrawlers on my own. a forum site. you know? cause i wanted to make one and if its not too expensive (cause i dont want an advertisement filled forum or one with a ton of ads like most free things are) so..if anyone knows ANYTHING at all, please let me know asap. thanx (and i did a search on things like this and didnt find any so im assuming its okay to make a new topic, i havent been here in awhile so im not sure how strict you guys are now what with all the new people)
"I am not your rolling wheels, I am the highway"
Bamfette
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Forums like nightscrawlers

Post by Bamfette »

two options. easy option: http://www.ezboard.com has ads on their free forums, but you can pay a monthly fee to remove the ads and you get a forum very much like this one.

not-so-easy option. get yourself some webspace from any number of hosts that has PHP support and MySQL databases. there are then a couple of free open source forums you can install, and because it is your own website, they are completely customizable. we use a forum set up called XMB we use it mostly because it came with the webspace :p but i could have switched to another more popular forum software if i wanted, but stayed with it... I like it because it is extremely customizable and it is very easy to get a look you like. phpBB is somewhat slicker and a bit less buggy (we have some issues with polls, you may have noticed) and has a couple more default options, but i have found that it is harder to customize, give unique features, and the themes (what gives the forum a distinct look) are hard to customize, so most phpBB forums you see use the default theme. it takes like 10 minutes to make a theme in XMB on the otherhand. i never was able to successfully make a theme with phpBB. but XMB 1.9 is supposed to be better than it, anyway. 1.9 is not available to the general public yet, but you can get it by signing up for a board via XMB's host: http://www.xmbforums.com or you can wait till 1.9 hits the general public

you will also see a lot of vBulletin boards out there, CBR and X-Fan use this software, and it IS very good. but the difference here is you have to pay for it, and the price is $85 a year, or $160 for unlimited use.
Northstars Love
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Forums like nightscrawlers

Post by Northstars Love »

Hey Jill! Saw you over at the XMB support forum. I sent you a U2U. Did you get it?:LOL Funny meeting you there!:P

Anyway BDJ, there is also another route you could go that gives you the option to attach attachments. So many forums like EZBoard don't allow it.

http://www.xsorbit.com/ You can choose free, gold, and platinum memberships. Plat gets you 10MB of webspace for attachments. But after 90 days they delete all the attachments unless you specify otherwise. I paid 5.99 for a month just to check out the features. Not bad. I like the attach capablity, not to mention the post counts reflect all the posts you made even in the past posts which does not happen at the EZBoard forums. I always thought that was strange. It was as if they took a picture of your post and there it remained. Weird.

There's also http://www.conforums.com/index.html

This isn't to shabby either. But I don't think that there is attachments allowed there tho. To me this is important.

I actually have a phpBB forum with my Nightcrawler Heaven website. It was free with my package but I opted for XMB because I like the features and as Bamfette said there's really not a whole lot you can do with it. No attachments...:(

As for XMB 1.9, I had that originally installed as an alpha version 7(meaning still at the early stages. Beta is next) but I was told its best to wait until the full and final version 1.9 comes out. There are bug issues still lingering about and not to mention some of the new themes don't have all their icons. Developers always rush out something that isn't completely finished.:rolleyes I will upgrade to 1.9 when it comes available. :D

Hope this had helped you out further ;)
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