Publishing System Settings Logout Login Register
Making a Free Forum with Forumotion
TutorialCommentsThe AuthorReport Tutorial
Tutorial Avatar
Rating
Add to Favorites
Posted on November 2nd, 2012
3999 views
Delphi

 

 

Making a Free Forum with Forumotion

 

Need to make a forum at a pinch? Forumotion and its range of affiliate websites offer a great way to get started. It's free, and hugely customizable. Here are the most important steps to follow in setting it up.

Forumotion is able to host your site for free via its own subscription to a cloud hosting provider. Forumotion pass the cost on to you via some small, unobtrusive ads on your forum. Your site will be hosted by Forumotion directly, so your address is likely going to be .forumotion.com, or possibly one of a number of alternative affiliate suffixes.

Once you have established you forum name and verified your email address, you’ll be presented with the front page of your forum. To start editing elements, head straight to the Administration panel at the bottom of the page.

The Administration panel can be a little overwhelming at first, but to make matters easier hit the ‘Simple’ checkbox, which will render it slightly more comprehensible. There’s an Advanced checkbox too, for those who already know what they’re doing.

You’ll probably want to start out by selecting a nice forum theme, which will serve to visually unite the widgets, background, and images of your website. These are all individually configurable later on, but the theme will give an idea of the overall flavor of your forum. To pick one, select the ‘display’ tab and, in the menu on the left hand side, hit ‘Choose a theme’ under ‘Skins’.

Now to customize your site a bit. Head to the main menu tab and select the ‘Configuration’ box under ‘Forum’. Here you’ll find a form that, once filled out, will name the site and give it some focal areas.

You’ll then need to add structure to your forums. Bear in mind that if you’re targeting a large user base, they’ll need to be able to add forums to cater to their own interest areas, so it may be best to keep things sparse at the beginning. Hit the row below ‘Configuration’ – it’s titled ‘Categories and forums’ – and add a few.

So, when do you use a Category, and when do you use a Forum? Well, Categories are great for organizing Forums in to broad topics. Don’t forget that the ultimate debating arena is a ‘Thread’, located inside the forum (and typically user-created). So, don’t give your forums names like ‘Help me with this specific problem in Windows Vista’, but instead perhaps call the forum ‘Windows Vista Advice’, and pop it inside a Category called ‘Computer Advice’. If you’re confident in the creativity of your target community, it may even be enough to simply create Categories and let them fill themselves out.

Your final step – for the basics, that is – is to head on to the ‘Users & Groups’ tab and have a play with the ‘Users options’ row in the main menu we used before. There’s a kind of hierarchy of government in forums, by default. An Admin – that’s you – can do pretty much anything (including deleting posts, checking private messages and intercepting ne’er-do-wells). A Moderator is kind of like a mini-Admin; they have fewer powers (and you can set these in the Users options menu). A Member is the average registered person, and a Guest is someone who signed up to your site. If you want to keep your forum secure and your community carefully pruned, you can disable Guest permissions, which means that visitors will have to register with your forum before they make any posts.

Now go forward, create and mingle! Running your own forum community can give you a tremendous sense of benign responsibility. Perhaps now it’s time to get a little better acquainted with those advanced features?

 

Dig this tutorial?
Thank the author by sending him a few P2L credits!

Send
Daniel497

This author is too busy writing tutorials instead of writing a personal profile!
View Full Profile Add as Friend Send PM
Pixel2Life Home Advanced Search Search Tutorial Index Publish Tutorials Community Forums Web Hosting P2L On Facebook P2L On Twitter P2L Feeds Tutorial Index Publish Tutorials Community Forums Web Hosting P2L On Facebook P2L On Twitter P2L Feeds Pixel2life Homepage Submit a Tutorial Publish a Tutorial Join our Forums P2L Marketplace Advertise on P2L P2L Website Hosting Help and FAQ Topsites Link Exchange P2L RSS Feeds P2L Sitemap Contact Us Privacy Statement Legal P2L Facebook Fanpage Follow us on Twitter P2L Studios Portal P2L Website Hosting Back to Top