Best way to start a forum?

[Kevman]

I was thinking of starting one, but every service I run into has one or more of these problems.

A) Doesn't give me a simple "www.domainname.com" address.
B) Has too many ads.
C) Is too complicated to customize.

I may be asking for a little too much, but for you website junkies what would be my best option?

EDIT: Forgot to mention I'm looking for something free!

[lordofduct]

free is a little hard to locate.

First off free webhosting is a little difficult to locate, especially with a unique domain name. If you shell out the money for registering the domain name you can get a website with 'ok' bandwidth and storage. doteasy.com offers this option.

But that won't give you the amount of space and tools you need to host a forum. A forum needs a decent amount of space, good bandwidth to stay speedy (especially something that is active as say here at Racketboy), and most likely MySQL. PHP would be very nice too. Those cost extra usually with most web hosts.

Really a forum of any value probably isn't going to be hosted for free.

Racketboy could probably give you the most information, I know he probably pumps a pretty penny into running this website. We should ALL appreciate that.

[racketboy]

Having free and quality is going to super hard to do.
For starting out, I would recommend my hosting company, ASmallOrange as they offer their smallest plan for $25 per YEAR
http://www.asmallorange.com/services/hosting/

They have some of the best service you can get and they have Fantastico set up so you can have scripts automatically install phpbb if that's what you want (which is the best free forum software)

You might also want to invest in a domain name if you're at all serious about it.
I had a Blogger-based blog with a racketboy.blogspot.com and I regret not getting a real domain sooner (from the start)

So with that hosting account and a domain, you're talking like $30-$35 a year. That's like $3 a month max. Not bad at all. That's cheaper than most boxes of cereal or a gallon of gas.

[Kevman]

Having free and quality is going to super hard to do.
For starting out, I would recommend my hosting company, ASmallOrange as they offer their smallest plan for $25 per YEAR
http://www.asmallorange.com/services/hosting/

They have some of the best service you can get and they have Fantastico set up so you can have scripts automatically install phpbb if that's what you want (which is the best free forum software)

You might also want to invest in a domain name if you're at all serious about it.
I had a Blogger-based blog with a racketboy.blogspot.com and I regret not getting a real domain sooner (from the start)

So with that hosting account and a domain, you're talking like $30-$35 a year. That's like $3 a month max. Not bad at all. That's cheaper than most boxes of cereal or a gallon of gas.

I see, perhaps I'll just use this www.freeforums.com place I found to see if I really want to have a forum and what not.

[kevinski]

I'd recommend Servage, as their prices are some of the best that I've seen. They have very little downtime, and what you get for your money is pretty much unbeatable. They have very quick support, as well. The only downside is that you'll need to pay for your service is large chunks. For instance, I pay for six months of service at a time. You can't just go from month to month. It really is an awesome service, though, and the domain name that comes with the hosting for free can be changed at will at no additional cost.

As for setting up a forum, they offer auto-installers that do the setup for you for various forums and content management systems. If you're trying to use something that isn't available in the auto-installer, then you can have a support rep set it up for you much of the time.