WEB SITE BUILDING HELP!

[Yellow venom]

I am in need of some assistance on how to get my website going, my wife and I are trying to get this website built for my local truck club,I would like to have a forum template so you can just change titles and get it going,Is this possable without out blowing a budget??
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Here is the start to it that we have so far....
http://srtconnect.com

Thanks for any assistance everyone.

 

[BriteCrawler]

http://www.phpbb.com/

 

[ViperJeff]

I use WebSiteToolbox

We have a .com and a separate message board. The message board is cheap and extremely easy to use

http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/moparsofutah

I've married the two together

http://www.moparsofutah.com/MOU/MessageBoard/tabid/53/Default.aspx

VJ

 

[kcsr]

http://www.phpbb.com/

another vote for phpbb. i run multiple forums, including a pretty big one with 18,000+ members and 3+ million posts, and phpbb has been great so far.

 

[Muzzy]

phpBB = bad. I used to use that, but there are numerous security holes that allow your site to get hacked. Their patches come out slowly. I use SimpleMachines instead. They have some pretty cool templates. It is very easy to manage and upgrade.

I use Joomla for a Content Management System (CMS). There is a little of a learning curve with it, but once you get the hang of it , it works well. You can tie your forum in through the Joomla front end.

-Muzzy

 

[JimTeTe]

I use godaddy.com ... about 70 - 200 bucks a year, depends what you want?
I host a local hot rod club and my brothers buisness site.
No problems ......

here's club site if ya want to look .. http://ct-streetcroozers.com

Jim

 

[NBT]

I hosted through GO Daddy, then purchased vBulletin, and had them set it all up... if your looking for a forum based community such as this.
Go Daddy has pretty easy to use templates, but I found that for as elaborate as we were getting, we needed a web builder to get our site done.
http://www.imaginationanimatedshorts.com/index.htm
For very easy site building, and cheap $ per month...check out the WS link at the bottom of my sig... pretty simple to use...and only 10 bucks a month. The WS has it's limitations... Depends how big your planning to get.... what your doing with it... online store? SSL Certificate, Merchant account...ect...ect.
I am learning as I go (which is a PAIN IN THE ASS)... but getting there.
I am sure you will get plenty of great feedback, as there are plenty of "IT" guy's/gal's in here.

Good Luck

 

[Muzzy]

Go Daddy is good. Both of the sites I host are through Go Daddy. You can't beat their hosting packages or options. Good place to start.

-Muzzy

 

[Yellow venom]

Excellent info from everyone,I started through Go Daddy so far,just exploring all the options,there sure is alot involved in getting this up and running.

 

[kcsr]

phpBB = bad. I used to use that, but there are numerous security holes that allow your site to get hacked. Their patches come out slowly. I use SimpleMachines instead. They have some pretty cool templates. It is very easy to manage and upgrade.

I use Joomla for a Content Management System (CMS). There is a little of a learning curve with it, but once you get the hang of it , it works well. You can tie your forum in through the Joomla front end.

-Muzzy

i've been using phpBB for 8 years, and have not had any problems. like everything else, keep it patched and you'll be ok. btw, SMF and Joomla have had plenty of vulnerabilities too. and before you judge phpBB, you should review the vulnerabilities - most have been cross site scripting and other minor issues that existed only if you failed to follow best practices and changed the default settings.

also, phpBB is more widely used and has been much more thoroughly audited and vetted. the only reason why SMF and Joomla have fewer vulnerabilities is because less time and effort has been spent looking for the vulnerabilities that exist in those packages.

 

[Muzzy]

also, phpBB is more widely used and has been much more thoroughly audited and vetted. the only reason why SMF and Joomla have fewer vulnerabilities is because less time and effort has been spent looking for the vulnerabilities that exist in those packages.

I had used phpbb for like 3 years. It is a decent forum application. As you pointed out because of it's popularity, it is also a big target for exploits. I religiously kept up with the updates and on more that one occasion has my site defaced or XSS problems.

There isn't anything out there that is not vulnerable to something. However, SimpleMachines does a better job of patching once known vulnerabilities are discovered. Either app will do the job for a forum, but my personal preference based on my experience is SimpleMachines.

Joomla is designed for content management, so it falls in a different category than the forum software. Joomla seems to have a little better support that some of the other content management applications.


-Muzzy