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Several of my friends and I have decided to take our small local gaming club to a newer level. We've decided on creating a web page and would like to include a forum for our local gaming area. I am  looking into forum software and wanted to know if any of you have attempted the same thing or even accomplished this feat. What would be some good programs to look at? Do you have your own server or do you host your website somewhere else? Any advice would be appreaciated.

Don't worry Dakka! We could never compete with you! LOL!

Dakka was originally a club forum, I believe.

There's www.proboards.com, which is a free forum provider similar to ezBoard, but without the ezNazis and their hideous, invasive advertising. Heck, Dakka started out on ezBoard IIRC. Proboards is much, much better though and has the same ease of use as other forums like uBB text coding, individual profiles, customizable titles, avatars, etc... I don't think it could handle the traffic of a place like Dakka, much less Warseer or some other large forum, but for a local group, it's perfect.

Proboards DOES have some rules to it. It's just that unless you're a conspicuous
porn trading site I doubt any of it gets reported.

Yes, Dakka did start out as a club web site, it's gone through variouis stages of being hosted on a 'free' web page provided with your ISP, through hosted by our own servers.

Today, Dakka Dakka servers are housed in the same facilities used by Paypal and Ebay (yes, it's true).

For quite some time we used free BBS software such as ezBoard, and that worked for quite awhile.  Hosting Discussion boards are tricky, due to the high volume, so I'd definitly recommend something like that.

 

Best of luck!!