Forum set up

Anyone here knows how much does it cost to maintain a forum similar to AF on a smaller scale? My friend who owns Redstar Racing had its site hosted and run by one of its members...then all of a sudden this person started his own company and tookover the site...Anyway, I plan on helping the owner and maybe set up his website plus set up a local forum for customers.

Bandwidth is the main thing, as long as you dont expect it to get to busy. Hell, last month AF used 288 gigs.

Anyways, you dont need much space. Just get a good say 10GB, 20GB data transfer, and the software. Some forum software can be had for free. But they suck, like ezboards etc.

so basically we can get the site hosted by lets say SBC (Southwestern Bell) and just shop around for the software?

Get dsl, cable, t1-t3, or an oc connection. I would recommend a single cpu p3 running 800-1000mhz, 1 gig of ram, a raid controller, and two 30gig 10 or 15k drives on raid-5 (data stripping you retain 30 gigs of space). As far as the forum software goes. Shop around. Find out what software this forum is running. I really like this format. It will probably cost around $100-300. Do all of this yourself. I would not reccomend paying a server company to run it for you. I just got a new file server at work. If you need any help just give me a pm.

software liscence is like 250 depending on what exactly you buy.
then server costs, depends on where and how much of a server your looking for. this runs into bandwidth, which is where the real question comes in. this kinda forum eats up bandwidth like you dont know ...

Thank you for the input...I will repost for more Q's when the time comes...I agree with Quicksilveref9 though on hosting your own to begin with. This will be my next project for the coming year (January)...so anyone from the Bay Area that want to pitch in, you're more than welcome...I'm sure we can work out some kind of a barter for performance tuning and what not...:flash: