What do I need to do to get a forum running?

I am considering running a forum similar to Digitalpoint. What is required to get that done? I am not really technical, so the more descriptive you can be, the better. Thanks!

 

Keep in mind, DP need years to be like this.
What you need:
1. good niche, (it sounds you want to make Webmaster forum)
2. Drive people to your forum.
3. Ensure you have good quality threads, and also good TOS that facilitate all members want
4. Try to make the members feel happy in your site (maybe making contest or something like that)
5. Keep promoting your forum.

good luck

 

Thanks petr_ind. I was wondering if vbulletin would be a good choice?

 

Your question about using the VB script this is only the one to use if you are looking at making it a big forum,if you are just say wanting a small support forum you could get away with the phpBB script but the No1 choice has to be the VB script.Good luck with your new project

 

phpbb, mybb, smf are free forum sotwares, with open source and big community. For big forum with higher php programming knowledge i recommend phpbb. With less php knowledge i recommend smf, that one is easily can be modded. For high security, go with mybb.
I think the best choice is smf.

Start your forum with buying a good domain name. A reliable shared server with php+mysql+htaccess enabled etc. would be good enough for starting your community, and if it is growing steadily, you can get a vps, then later on a dedi.

So for starting i recommend:
your own domain
smf forum software
php+mysql, reliable shared hosting (can be even free hosting, but find a big one, which has good reviews)
seo seo seo and seo


About vb: you can get it later on if it is worth, and the community is good enough... there are always updated version of smf to vb scripts, so you can move everything to that commercial software if that is your need (but i think you will love smf once you get used to it)

 

At least you should know dynamic web page technique, such PHP, ASP.NET, JSP. digitalpoint uses PHP.

 

i think u should add some experts to ur forum to start things then it will automatically grow and give good results but make sure that u provide the proper content and the threads.
Thanks