I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction. I want to add a discussion forum to an existing site. Where do you get these templates, all these templates for different forums kind of seem to look the same? Are they rentable for a monthly fee from a company?

Thanks

This is a free bulletin board package > http://www.phpbb.com/

Free forum software:

Simple Machines Forum:

http://www.simplemachines.org/

Vanilla 1.0:

http://getvanilla.com/

A huge article comparing all kinds of forum software, paid, and free versions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of..._forum_software

Another one is http://www.yabbforum.com/

Do check out the control panel of your hosting company. A lot already include several scripts, easily and almost automatically installed trough the control panel!

On my host (using the cpanel control center, used by many hosts) the above forum was installed in three clicks flat!

It'll then take some time to wade through all the forum settings making you arrive at a look you like...

Remember, all of these PHP forum softwares uses a mysql database to

store the data.

You are going to need a host that has this.

Basically 2 things they'll need, Mysql and PHP.

Once logged in thru your Cpanel etc, become familiar with PHPmyadmin.

It will be your best friend when something unforeseen happens.

Also, don't forget to backup your database often.

Thanks a lot guys for the extremely useful tips. One more question, if the host provides the extra service does one have to pay extra or is it simply part of the package which means free?

It should be part of the package, no extra costs there.

(Almost every host has it)

Hosting costs are usually measured in how much bandwith you'll be consuming.

A site with few visitors = low bandwith

Google= A little bit more