Hey, I've just bought createbb.com from Nickman. Im in the process of setting it up for the public (installing themes and such), and I want to know what sort of features you guys (and girls
) want.
It will have to generate some source of income in order to pay for the server, how do you think we could best achieve this? Ads? Paid hosting? Donations?
At the moment you can only have a subdomain (yourforum.createbb.com) of createbb. BUT, I am willing to set-up virtual hosts for anyone who wants their own domain
(This will probably be a paid option as it will include FTP accounts, mailboxes etc...)
Also, do you think it is morally right to request a donation from forums that are very intensive? As in, they use up a LOT of bandwidth.
I'd be gratefulfor your input
Ads. What script are you using for it? I can provide you some tips to best monetize your site if you would like.
Ill am using Brandons Multiforums script, having trouble with the wildcard subdomains atm
Ah, I see. Well IMO the best way to monetize a free forum host is to put banners on the main site (don't go overkill and make sure they fit the site, also make sure there is 1 positioned nicely on the sign-up page as that one will normally get the most clicks).
Also don't forget to put ads on your error pages! I cannot stress this enough. 404 error pages are an excellent place to put ads and generate A LOT of income. On my free hosting sites I made the majority of my income off of the banners on error pages (500, 403, 404, etc...).
The best part is that all of your forums will use the same error pages and even better is that the only time visitors see the banners is when they get an error which means they won't be displayed on the hosted forums so you can still remain ad-free while generating income.
If you need any help let me know and I can offer some assistance as I've worked with Brandon's script many times (I normally rewrite some of the code for better security and better appearance but I've included those tutorials on Brandon's forums
).
Well how do you set up wildcard DNS with Bind on a virtual host, inside my VPS
Oh, and as for donations, just place a small link on your site and the members who are really interested will find it and donate. Do not post the link on each page or make it big and flashy as it will just get annoying and look like you're begging. Based on my experience, donations will make up a small percent of your income but with some properly placed affiliate scripts (check out
www.co.cc, they pay very nicely and since the domains are free users of free services are more willing to sign-up).
I've added
ServerAlias *.createbb.com
For the wildcards, to be honest I do mine in cPanel but when I get home I can check what my httpd.conf file looks like.
Yeah, but cPanel manages DNS, I dont have cPanel, so have to do it manually through Terminal, but i dont exactly know what to edit XD