3 Easy Steps: How to Start a Forum Website (Feb. 2024)

Whether you’re running an online business, showcasing your professional portfolio, or simply blogging about your life, learning how to start a forum website can be a successful way to attract more readers and boost visitor engagement.

From the earliest days of the World Wide Web and the even earlier days of physically posting your message in a designated area, bulletin boards have offered a popular way to spread information and communicate with others who share your interests. Even better, online communities lead to increased sales, lead opportunities, SEO, overall traffic, and customer retention, with 90% of forum owners saying that user submissions help improve products and services, as well.

Now, millions of internet users around the world use online forums to discuss politics, sports, parenting tips, and the latest celebrity meme. Learn how to easily leverage message boards to drive traffic and revenue by reading through our three-step guide and software reviews below.

How to Create a Forum | Best Hosts | FAQs

Even though discussion forums are some of the earliest web technologies developed, the communication method and online communities still power a variety of well-known brands across multiple industries and interests. Forums on Reddit, the world’s fifth most-visited website, accounts for 21 billion page views each month across more than 130,000 active communities.

Without strong technology behind your forum, the increased traffic and interactions increase the risk of slow page loads, downtime, or compromised accounts. As soon as you decide to create a forum website from scratch, examine the various ingredients to find the perfect mix of speed, security, and scalability — starting with your site’s web hosting plan.

The best web hosts blend affordability with easy-to-use technologies like one-click software installations, domain name registration, and email notifications, among other components needed to run a successful forum website. We’ve listed our favorite options below for forum management, highlighting those that offer popular message board apps, around-the-clock customer support, and ample resources to support your burgeoning community. Read our reviews below and click on each to learn more.

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Once all the hosting wires are connected, it’s time to choose the software you’ll want to power your discussion board. Creating an online forum system from scratch is a time-consuming and extremely complicated venture, so you’re absolutely better served by downloading and installing a program that handles all the complicated matters for you.

As you may imagine, numerous platform options exist for seemingly countless types of communities and website owners. For instance, WordPress users are likely to use an open-source program written in PHP, while premium options may offer businesses more freedom to customize and configure functionality. Here are some of the most popular free programs:

Once your software is installed (check the program’s documentation for help), you can now move on to the fun of choosing a theme, customizing the design, and setting up the various user permissions and forum rules you wish to implement. Write a post explaining the standards for discriminatory or vulgar language, spam, self-promotion, external links, membership, and moderation and publish it in a prominent, permanent spot. Going through the exercise will also enable you to test out the software from your users’ perspective and take screenshots for any knowledge base or support article you may post.

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