Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hello All,
    I am thrilled to have found SUN!  I think this site is a great asset to those of us trying to live the American dream!  I hope that you can give me some perspective.
    I am trying to set up a community where independent contractors of FedEx Ground are able to meet, share information as to how others have handled problems, as well as provide an association or club to get discounts on parts, insurances, etc.  Having no experience setting up a website, I was wondering what are the challenges to prepare from the onset for future growth of more use by customers and expansion of additional pages?  What kind of expenses have you incurred when your site has needed to change over the years?  And what should be done in the beginning of site development in order to create the least amount of problems and obstacles in the future?
    Thanks for sharing your time, and your thoughts.

Todd
BGRA Enterprises

Maybe a basic discussion forum would work for you, like SMF or phpBB. They offer many additional modules you can add into the program for additional functionality, as well as templates for different looks. Most major forum programs are made for large amounts of members.

Since they are free ( and sometimes pre packeged in some hosting accounts ), initial costs would probably be just the domain name registration and server set up fees. Costs down the road would be dependent on what you needed to have changed.

There are also pre-made portal and cms systems, however some can be difficult to learn to use. It really depends on your budget and how involved you want your site to be.



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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

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Web Design | Best Beef Jerky | ecommerce articles | Follow vwebworld on Twitter

I would start with a Forum as well and then move it into a subdomain after you have a whole community setup with articles and guides. The difficult part of any forum will be to get enough users to start up so that any new visitor isn`t hesitant to look through and or post.

Your market seems very niche so I would recommend researching what is already available and if there is another community already doing this. Don`t forget to double check top-site groups like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc.

Since you will probably go the Forum route, you need to start thinking of a functional structure of the forum. For example:

• What Categories and Sub-categories will there be
• Who will moderate, who can apply to moderate
• Posting/Registration policy, what won`t be tolerated
• (Make it as simple as possible)
• What is the incentive to register and use the site
• Will posts be viewable to non-registered users? (My suggestion: yes)
• Will there be private forums, user groups, etc.

Again, starting up the forum will be the hardest. Setting up the site will be fairly easy, and I suggest using PhpBB. Getting people to the site, and getting them to contribute will be your primary task.

If you give us some more information on your audience/market we could give you a more specific suggestion.

Regards



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Colin Winter
Small Business Website Management and Marketing

There`s also a free on-line service (www.informe.com) that will host a portal (gathering place/web site) for you and they have the capability to run forums. You might want to try out your idea there before you invest any money.

Sorry, I can`t tell you much about it from personal experience (yet).  I have an account set up there for an idea I`m working on, but haven`t used the service very much.  It looks promising to me.

 

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Chas T.
"You can always better your best."

CT on Twitter

i am working on a website and i want to know what are the licenses and permissions are required for making and launching the website

  I regret having taken way too long to get back to this thread, and to get my idea going.  But I have been doing some research, so not all this time has been lost. 

  It seems like starting with forums is the consensus and then building the rest of the site from there.  However, is it better to have subdomains where I perceive that I will have more costs for each, or should I set up the site at the outset with subdirectories? 

  At the onset I also want to have:       content pages-potentially hundreds of pages (a CMS will also be necessary); pages where customers can sign up for special offers- discount parts, insurance, ect (this will be a part of the 4 levels of members I intend to offer-free, silver, gold and platinum, so a merchant account will be necessary); a database for all of the registrant`s info-so it must have security; a calendar- so the user can add their own reminders to do maintenance, or important dates ect; a news page-with up to date information about what effects the customer`s business; classifieds; a blog; an e-commerce store; pre-built spreadsheets; customers can ship packages from my site at a group rate; as well as a few other products or services.  

  All of this does not need to happen at the onset of the site, but I do have some capitol available that I plan on spending in chunks such that we can add a few products or services every few months.  I hope this explains my thoughts a little more.

  While reading your posts, I have noticed that a majority of suggestions are for products or programs that are free or very low cost, which is great.  But, could these types of coding help me in this case, or do I need to go the route of the completely customized site? 

  As you can see, I am almost completely clueless, so any help is greatly appreciated.

Todd

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Chas T.
"You can always better your best."

CT on Twitter