Forum Hosting

What is a Forum?

Hosted Forums are online community websites, where people with common interests can engage with each other through conversation threads. Users can easily make an account, start conversational threads, or they can participate in a conversation. Everything in these forums is open to the public, making it a great place for people to find and discuss information, about virtually any topic.

A forum is a common way to encourage users to participate, and to gather information on specific subjects. For years, forums have been a vital part of the internet. Users frequently visit forums to seek proper assistance, from daily chores to professional guidance, and everything in between. According to statistics, viable online communities enhance online business income by 25% on average. Therefore participation in a forum community can be a huge advantage over competitors!

What are the reasons to choose forum hosting?

Choosing a specialized Forum hosting service requires as much thought, as choosing a web host for any other conventional website. After all, an online forum frequently has a lot more going on behind the scenes, than a traditional site. This is because a lot of internet traffic can reach forums at the same time and users can stay on the forum for quite a long time. As a result, forums become heavy, resource-intensive platforms. As the number of visitors grows and the forums become busier, they begin to consume more server resources than a standard website. This could affect the performance of your overall forum website.

With Hostdive forum hosting, you will never have to sacrifice the performance, and durability of your site. No matter how popular your forum becomes, you can keep it running smoothly. Our forum web hosting services, allow you to choose from a library of pre-built designs when you utilize the available forum software, with our high-quality forum hosting service. You may also alter these skins to give your forum a distinctive look, that your visitors will recognize right away. You can add your branding without having to advertise someone else's platform, because you are running your own forum, rather than relying on a third-party forum service. The forum host server will enable you to run your own forum solution.

Widely used Forum solutions

vBulletin

This is one of the most widely used stand-alone forum software applications worldwide. It is popular in a wide variety of organizations. It is an incredibly strong software, with extremely responsive web design, unrivaled security measures, and built-in SEO. You can personalize your forum in ways that only a few web developers can, such as creating a hierarchy of topic conversations and private forums.

vBulletin’s most essential feature is its visitors will be able to create friends lists and send private messages to one another. With the adoption of online/offline indicators, you will be able to improve your forum's visitor experience and aid in real-time communications.

bbPress

Built on top of WordPress, bbPress is a free, open-source forum software. It can be installed as a WordPress plugin on any site that uses WordPress. It does not consume a lot of resources, unlike earlier WordPress forum software. It was designed by the same team, that invented WordPress; therefore, it holds the same minimalistic design principles. It's also incredibly expandable, allowing it to easily handle multiple forums. Because it is a plugin, bbPress makes adding a forum to a WordPress site simple. It is compatible with most ordinary WordPress themes.

Most prominent stand-alone software platforms are self-contained, therefore integrating them into a WordPress website is very difficult. This issue is addressed by bbPress. It is easy to integrate into a WordPress theme, while still retaining WordPress's simplicity and extensibility. It provides the ability to customize templates as well!

phpBB

With millions of active users every day. phpBB is one of the most popular forum software. It gives clients the freedom to alter the code as they want as it is Open Source. Because of this, your forum's design will be responsive, modern, and unique. Your forum will also be accessible to users, across multiple browsers.

As you might expect from the name, phpBB is built using the PHP programming language, and the Symphony framework. It also has a very admin-friendly interface, that allows you to manage forums, through a full administration panel. Our Shared Web hosting provides the DirectAdmin panel that allows clients to have more control, over the entire functionality of the forum. phpBB is simple to use, even for individuals with little or no web programming experience. Its selling feature is, through the messaging board, forum visitors will be able to send private messages to other forum participants.

CODOFORUM

This forum solution is created using the PHP programming language as well. It is also fully consistent with current PHP standards, ensuring that your forum's code is up-to-date. CODOFORUM is extremely responsive for both, mobile and desktop visitors. It will also integrate single sign-on (SSO) and other security features into your forum, to avoid hackers stealing users’ data or any crucial information. Visitors will have more opportunities to communicate with one another, because they can receive notifications from individuals, answering their favorite threads.

We could only cover the various forum software in very basic details. If you open a hosting account with HostDive you can experiment with these forum solutions easily. Simply install any of them by using the built-in Softaculous software installer!