What are the reasons for having a forum?
Forums permit your customers and potential customers to discuss issues. They get the chance to ask questions and make comments while reading the responses from others. This will probably relieve your support/customer service departments of some unnecessary work, and users find it to be convenient.
In addition, it's a great way to obtain free links for Search Engine Ranking.
Why phpBB?
There is no cost involved. It's not necessary to purchase licenses -- is available as Open Source. The program or source code is not encrypted, allowing you the freedom to alter it or make additions to the code as necessary. But if you want to make any major changes, you will need some PHP knowledge.
Installing phpBB
Note: PHP and MySQL (The programming language and Database Engine) are native to Apache Servers. Though Windows servers have PHP emulators, you will most likely be better off finding Bulletin Board Software designed specifically for the Windows Server Operating Systems.
The phpBB forum software can be installed as soon as you download it. You will need some knowledge to perform the initial install -- that is, unless you are lucky enough to have a website host that has Fantastico installed on its server already. It takes only a few seconds for Fantastico to automatically install phpBB. After that, just a bit of configuration is needed before you can activate your forum. If you'd prefer to install it yourself, you must be or become knowledgeable about such things as setting file and folder permissions, FTP, and setting up a MySQL database.
Personalizing and altering the appearance.
You can change the appearance of your forum using various themes. The majority of them are free but some request donations. Or if you are up for a challenge, you can make your own or alter your current theme.
There is a good amount of assistance to be found on the phpBB user forums. Or you can contract a programmer to program changes on a single task basis. It's surprisingly inexpensive and easy to locate good PHP programmers.
Stephen Grisham, Sr. is a copy writer for InfoServe Media, LLC. InfoServe Media is a Houston web design company and hosting company. Or if you just need a few changes to an existing site, InfoServe Media also offers website maintenance.
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