What do I need to set up a CUK like portal?

[saptastic]

Been brainstorming a plan B recently and wondered what is involved in setting up a portal similar to CUK and all the other 'forums' I use that seem to have been built using the same building blocks. Can anyone point me at a shopping list of hardware/software/skills/hosting/likely costs to do similar for my Plan B please?

as you know there are thousands of crap websites set up every day. the point is the traffic - and making sure as someone said that the subject has not been done and re-done a million times. cuk portal has been around for many years and like most websites takes years to build up a following. Set yourself a 5 year plan.

[singhr]

Oh well. May as well bung in an advert for a mate.

When I put www.chutneyspoon.co.uk up, the hosting company provides a shedload of scripts and databases. Amongst those is a few choices for forum software.

Cobbling together a forum looked intimidating because of the number of menu options, but in this case (phpBB) actually turned out to be trivial.

www.chutneyspoon.co.uk/forum

I suspect plenty of hosting companies throw in such scripts and tools. And for those that don't you can install your own. But certainly for HostPost, it has intentionally been made sufficiently easy for non-IT people to be able to do it.

thanks. that's the kind of thing I might need. Blimey you guys really went to town on that cyberman character.

[RichardCranium]

Oh well. May as well bung in an advert for a mate.

When I put www.chutneyspoon.co.uk up, the hosting company provides a shedload of scripts and databases. Amongst those is a few choices for forum software.

Cobbling together a forum looked intimidating because of the number of menu options, but in this case (phpBB) actually turned out to be trivial.

www.chutneyspoon.co.uk/forum

I suspect plenty of hosting companies throw in such scripts and tools. And for those that don't you can install your own. But certainly for HostPost, it has intentionally been made sufficiently easy for non-IT people to be able to do it.

[Jeebo72]

I'm available for a transfer fee of £40,000,000 ... no agents will be involved in this one tho' ;-)

[singhr]

If you really want it to reflect CUK you will also you need a couple 1000 numpties with nothing to do but post on it during work time

I don't know what the CUK business model is, I always assumed it was funded by the advertising banners I see about the place. Presumably the advertisers think the 'numpties' as you call them are a good target audience?

[Diver]

If you really want it to reflect CUK you will also you need a couple 1000 numpties with nothing to do but post on it during work time

+ a tpd thread

[singhr]

Any of the following CMS Drupal (php) / Joomla (php) / DotNetNuke (.NET)

To get basic portal on any of these minimal skill is required (basic configuration abilities/ maybe little bit of code altering) and lots of mods/designs out there for free, if you want to highly customise skill required goes up proportionally

There are commercial (paid for) alternatives, but to be honest never found any that are value for money when you compare features against the free ones

Either of the following forum software: phpbb (free) / vbulletin (paid for). Also most of the CMS have their own forum software

Hosting cost's, pretty much get what you paid for, if not a large amount of traffic can get for £5 to £20 a month, if talking large amounts of traffic costs go up considerably

Btw, portals are done to death, make sure no one is successfully covering the area you want to do (and if not why not) before starting

Thanks for the advice and especially that last bit about researching first, I am just at the homework stage so its early days yet.

[northernladuk]

If you really want it to reflect CUK you will also you need a couple 1000 numpties with nothing to do but post on it during work time

[Not So Wise]

Any of the following CMS Drupal (php) / Joomla (php) / DotNetNuke (.NET)

To get basic portal on any of these minimal skill is required (basic configuration abilities/ maybe little bit of code altering) and lots of mods/designs out there for free, if you want to highly customise skill required goes up proportionally

There are commercial (paid for) alternatives, but to be honest never found any that are value for money when you compare features against the free ones

Either of the following forum software: phpbb (free) / vbulletin (paid for). Also most of the CMS have their own forum software

Hosting cost's, pretty much get what you paid for, if not a large amount of traffic can get for £5 to £20 a month, if talking large amounts of traffic costs go up considerably

Btw, portals are done to death, make sure no one is successfully covering the area you want to do (and if not why not) before starting

[singhr]

Been brainstorming a plan B recently and wondered what is involved in setting up a portal similar to CUK and all the other 'forums' I use that seem to have been built using the same building blocks. Can anyone point me at a shopping list of hardware/software/skills/hosting/likely costs to do similar for my Plan B please?