My journey of creating a website
In 2020, I took the big step of creating my own forum after almost a decade of participating on other forums. There are lots of challenges that I've faced. Let me say that I have very little knowledge in website production. I just know basic html and a few things about a computer server. I sought after a lot of technical support which involved taking directions to do the fixes myself or having technical support do the fixes for me. So now lets get to the process.
First thing I did was purchase a domain name (TheAgnosticForum) from a domain registry company. The challenge there is a domain name has to be unique, and a lot of names are already taken. Then I had to pay for web hosting service which includes access to a server to store the information for your site along with other tools for running it. When purchasing a hosting plan, you need to consider the size of your site in terms of the amount of traffic you expect to receive and how many pages/content you'll have on it. The bigger your site, then the more storage space and processing power you'll need. I chose a deal that is for moderately sized sites. I figured, I don't have a lot of active members yet, but I don't want a sluggish site either. Next, I had to look up forum programs to run on. There were several that I was looking at but I ended up going with Xenforo because it had the most add-ons that I wanted.
Now on to the fun part. After getting most of the technical details of infrastructure out of the way, I got to focus on the content part of the site, i.e. coming up with theme, rules, forum categories, the font, colors, usergroups, etc. And all of this leads to the most fun which is interacting and connecting with members from all over.
Pricing
Running a server cost me about $150/year (there are more expensive and cheaper plans). Website security is about $150/year (there are cheaper and more expensive plans). Domain name renewal $20.00/year. The forum software was a one time payment of $100, although I'm paying an annual fee to have technical support available. So I'm paying over $300 a year. Believe me there are cheaper options, like free forum programs, cheaper hosting/server services, including not having website security. There are even sites like Wix where you can design a website for free I believe. But I chose to go with services that are priced at the middle level for quality reasons.
Running a website can also cost a lot of your time. I'd rather deal with moderating issues than with technical issues. Fortunately, most of my technical problems here have been with my security program blocking the submission of some posts.
In 2020, I took the big step of creating my own forum after almost a decade of participating on other forums. There are lots of challenges that I've faced. Let me say that I have very little knowledge in website production. I just know basic html and a few things about a computer server. I sought after a lot of technical support which involved taking directions to do the fixes myself or having technical support do the fixes for me. So now lets get to the process.
First thing I did was purchase a domain name (TheAgnosticForum) from a domain registry company. The challenge there is a domain name has to be unique, and a lot of names are already taken. Then I had to pay for web hosting service which includes access to a server to store the information for your site along with other tools for running it. When purchasing a hosting plan, you need to consider the size of your site in terms of the amount of traffic you expect to receive and how many pages/content you'll have on it. The bigger your site, then the more storage space and processing power you'll need. I chose a deal that is for moderately sized sites. I figured, I don't have a lot of active members yet, but I don't want a sluggish site either. Next, I had to look up forum programs to run on. There were several that I was looking at but I ended up going with Xenforo because it had the most add-ons that I wanted.
Now on to the fun part. After getting most of the technical details of infrastructure out of the way, I got to focus on the content part of the site, i.e. coming up with theme, rules, forum categories, the font, colors, usergroups, etc. And all of this leads to the most fun which is interacting and connecting with members from all over.
Pricing
Running a server cost me about $150/year (there are more expensive and cheaper plans). Website security is about $150/year (there are cheaper and more expensive plans). Domain name renewal $20.00/year. The forum software was a one time payment of $100, although I'm paying an annual fee to have technical support available. So I'm paying over $300 a year. Believe me there are cheaper options, like free forum programs, cheaper hosting/server services, including not having website security. There are even sites like Wix where you can design a website for free I believe. But I chose to go with services that are priced at the middle level for quality reasons.
Running a website can also cost a lot of your time. I'd rather deal with moderating issues than with technical issues. Fortunately, most of my technical problems here have been with my security program blocking the submission of some posts.
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