So, you want to run your own forum host? Well, so do a lot of other people. I can't tell you how often I see a forum host that either starts and then dies, never gets off the ground, or that simply continues to run indefinitely without any sign of new life and growth. I also know, however, that there are exceptions to the rule. Before I was a software developer I was also a forum host, and I still am. I have been running my free forum host WebringAmerica since 2005. Since then I have learned a few tricks, tips and lessons that I will share with you here today. Follow my advise and your forum host can become a profitable business as well as a fun activity.
Here are my top five tips for running a free forum host:
Tip 1: Support is Everything
When you start a free forum hosting site, your end result is to get clients on the site. Clients, of course, support your site and are the lifeblood of your business. Think of your clients as your customers. Therefore, when your customers have a question, you should be there to help them. If you are going to be a free MyBB forum host then you will need to be prepared to help users when they have questions. Set up a support forum for your users and be sure to check it regularly. Users should not have to wait more than a day or two to get a response from you. Trust me, happy users are users who will stick with your site. If your users can't get help when they need it, they will go somewhere else where they can get help.
Tip 2: Have a Niche
Ever wonder what makes you special? When starting a free forum hosting site you need to try and find that one thing that you do better than all the rest of the free forum hosts. Are you going to have the best support of any free forum host? Will you have the most mods and themes of all the free forum hosts? Will you give users the most types of forum software to choose from? If you find and provide something that people want or need in a free forum host then you will have success. Never underestimate the power of word of mouth feedback. Your users will talk about your service. What do you want them to say?
Tip 3: Ads shouldn't be your only revenue source
Many free forum hosts make the mistake of thinking that the only way they can make money is with advertisements. There are, however, other ways of making money besides ads. For instance, we offer a modification to Premium Members that allows a forum host to charge users for backups of their forum. You can also make money by upselling your customers. I recommend that you get a reseller CPanel hosting account when you purchase your hosting. This way you can easily upgrade your users from free forum hosting to a small paid CPanel hosting account, thus giving you a guaranteed sum of money every month from your premium clients. Moving a client to premium hosting is easy, simply back up their forum in PHPMyAdmin, upload MyBB on a new CPanel account, import the database backup and that's all there is!
Tip 4: Don't go bigger than you have to
A lot of free forum hosts think that they need a dedicated server to host forums. WRONG! For my first two years of forum hosting all I needed was cheap shared hosting, that cost me about $5 a month. Now I have hosting on two servers, with one reseller account and one shared account, and I only pay about $15 a month. I easily make that up in revenues from premium clients. If you're just starting out you can definentally get away with using shared hosting. Just make sure that your host is ok with you running a free forum hosting site, and be sure to watch your server usage. You should only have to upgrade to a VPS or a dedicated server if you site becomes very popular. If you need a host you should try the FreeWebSpace Forums. It's like a reverse eBay for web hosts.
Tip 5: Secure your site
When you're running a free forum hosting site, a lot can go wrong if you don't lock it down. Hackers, Denial of Service Attacks and more are very real threats. This is a lesson I learned the hard way. In 2006, my site came under a DoS attack, from Google. Google's web crawler wasn't able to efficiently crawl the hosted forums, so it tried to crawl about 500 forums within 10 seconds. This caused the server to undergo a DoS attack like effect, knocking me offline, along with everyone else on the shared server. I was also attacked by hackers during the brief period in early 2007 when I hosted Wordpress blogs. (Tip: NEVER host blogs.) A hacker had managed to exploit Wordpress and mess up the site. You see, security is very important. Make sure that you lock down your site. Don't let your users have access to parts of the server that they shouldn't have access to. I designed my MyBB Multiforums Script with security in mind. Areas that are dangerous have been locked down or removed from the script so users can't harm your server. You should also be on the lookout for suspicious activity with your hosting. Check all hosted forums regularly and make sure they aren't hosting any hacking sites or illegal material. You wouldn't believe some of the things people tried to host on my site. Check your files and uploaded attachments periodically and make sure they all look ok. Taking the time to inspect your site every once in a while can help you prevent incidents down the road.
Well, these are my tips. I hope that they help you. If you have questions you can email me at brusnak@webringamerica.com or you can visit our Support Forums. (Check out the Forum Host Bat-Cave forum, the place where us forum hosts can chat and help each other out.)
Best of luck,
Brandon
