chrisjd Posted December 2, 2006 Report Share Posted December 2, 2006 I am making my own website but am having problems. Anyone good/knowledgable that could take me through it would be greatfully received Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cycas Posted December 3, 2006 Report Share Posted December 3, 2006 (edited) Ummm - that's kind of a big question Chris! Maybe you could tell us a bit about the website and the problems that you are having with it? That way you are more likely to get answers from people who know how the particular system you are using works. I am a website developer, but there are lots of web-type questions that I could not answer, because there are so many technologies and different sorts of software you could be using! Edited December 3, 2006 by cycas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisjd Posted December 3, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 3, 2006 I have currently a free forum board and need to get it hosted but by who? and how do i do it? 123reg have the name i want for it for 2.59 a year. But again how do i link it to the board?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snow Posted December 3, 2006 Report Share Posted December 3, 2006 Ok if you are using free forum software I'd need to know specifically which free forum host you are using, the vast majority do not allow you to use your own domain name, rather the board is a subdomain of their hosting, thats so they can a] host so many free boards and b] control any advertising on them amongst other things and c] it's publicity for them that your forum has their domain address. You can of course buy a domain name and many registrars will "park it" for free - some may even give you enough space for maybe 1 or 2 pages which you could use to direct people to the forum. However, if what you are looking for is webspace and a forum under your own domain name i.e. www.chrisjdswebsite/forum then you'll need to buy webhosting and install and host the forum yourself. You may find a free host that will allow you your own domain name -- but you'll need to do your homework and really look into what's on offer. http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ is the place to go to check out webhosts free and paid. If you do decide to go with paid hosting I can highly recommend the host I use which would cost you £61.65 for the year with a FREE domain registration of your choice, also features one click installs of phpBb forum software amongst other things, plus allows domain email accounts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisjd Posted December 3, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 3, 2006 I have a phpbb forum! All a little baffling to me and I want to keep cost to a minimum! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cycas Posted December 3, 2006 Report Share Posted December 3, 2006 Where is your current phpbb forum hosted, and why do you need to move it from there? Can you give us the current web address? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisjd Posted December 3, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 3, 2006 Here! (under) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snow Posted December 3, 2006 Report Share Posted December 3, 2006 Nope there is no way for you to have the forum address as your domain, best bet is find a free host that will support you having your own domain name, and then have a link to the forum on your website. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisjd Posted December 3, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 3, 2006 So I cant have for example Please contact a staff member if you are seeing this message and link it to board so if people type in that it comes up with board? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard (The Sane) Posted December 4, 2006 Report Share Posted December 4, 2006 So I cant have for example Please contact a staff member if you are seeing this message and link it to board so if people type in that it comes up with board? Nothing stopping you. 123 reg have a control panel where you can set up domain forwarding. If you set your domain to forward to the address of your board then anyone going to the web address will automatically be redirected to your board. Although you might be better looking at a hosting package and running the board yourself. My webhost costs £26 a year for package including a domain name. They also have an installer for Phpbb2 which will set the board up for you - but then you have full access to every aspect of it rather than being restricted in the way free sites are. I'm sure there are other hosts out there that do similar things too. You get a far better service if you are willing to pay a bit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cycas Posted December 4, 2006 Report Share Posted December 4, 2006 This is all technically possible of course, Richard - but Chris is at the level where he's not confident about domain name configuration, so I'm just a bit worried about whether diving into a phpBB install is necessarily a good move. It's a great BB, don't get me wrong - but because it's so popular it seems to be awfully vulnerable to attack. I've recently been thinking about setting up a forum, and I've decided not to do it because I'm not confident that I would *always* get the security updates installed on time, every time, and I'm not sure I would always be able to stand things back up again if it got hacked and be really confident that my users' data was safe. If I did do it, I'd be inclined to not use phpbb, not because there is anything wrong with it at all, but because it seems to be a bit of a magnet for annoying people with too much time on their hands. I don't know if I am being over-wary? Getting the forum hosting from a bb host as Chris has done, that does all the upgrades does seem like a safer option, even if they don't let you use a vanity domain. One could use frame forwarding, which I think is what you suggested first, but personally I wouldn't, because it will affect functionality. With a forum I'd say it's more important to be able to link directly to an individual thread than to have slightly more attractive URIs. I'd either set up a front page with a link, as Snow suggested, or if there was really no content to be used on the home page, I'd use a meta redirect, which ISTR that 123reg describes as "Non-framed web-forwarding" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisjd Posted December 5, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 5, 2006 Thanks for the suggestions guys! I have not linked a proper domain name to the site!! Please contact a staff member if you are seeing this message now works! Just need to get rid of the adverts at the top!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snow Posted December 5, 2006 Report Share Posted December 5, 2006 This is all technically possible of course, Richard - but Chris is at the level where he's not confident about domain name configuration, so I'm just a bit worried about whether diving into a phpBB install is necessarily a good move. It's a great BB, don't get me wrong - but because it's so popular it seems to be awfully vulnerable to attack. I've recently been thinking about setting up a forum, and I've decided not to do it because I'm not confident that I would *always* get the security updates installed on time, every time, and I'm not sure I would always be able to stand things back up again if it got hacked and be really confident that my users' data was safe. If I did do it, I'd be inclined to not use phpbb, not because there is anything wrong with it at all, but because it seems to be a bit of a magnet for annoying people with too much time on their hands. I don't know if I am being over-wary? Yes you are although in a sensible way - NO forum software is ever 100% safe, but I would disagree that phpBb is any more vulnerable than any of the others out there, even the premium priced ones like VB. As you rightly pointed out it's failing to patch that catches out 99.9% of board owners. My concern with the hosted free forums is having no control at all over the database, and no say over just who is reading it. Not to mention if I want advertising on my site then I want my ads running generating me income, plus the absolute control over the type of ads I will allow. I've been running boards and mentoring forum admins for many years now so I have sadly come across so many instances of great boards disappearing overnight because the "host" either goes titsup or someone makes a complaint and they over react or their servers catastrophically crash and theres no back ups (see the ongoing nightmare over at ezboard for a classic example). There are so many reasons why a free host will pull a board and they don't care one jot about members, or whether it's a charity forum etc. The ones that offer a "premium" upgrade service to no advertising and/or database access charge you thru the nose for that, far far more than it would ever cost someone to host their own. With phpbb many hosts offer a one click install, and loads even offer a one click update service (which is great if you run a clean install no mods or custom hacks etc.) Most of the "hacking" isn't really hacking at all it's "cracking" and a lot of the time thats down to poor password security - there have been few instances of database access hacks via phpbb that I'm aware of, it's normally just mucking about with the templates and easily sorted by reuploading the originals. The worst type of damage comes via a password breach with root admin access but again theres no way into the database via the phpbb admin cp. phpBB3 is at beta 4 right now with an RC due any day now *fingers crossed* take a look at that when it's out - I think you might be very pleasantly surprised Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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