After much thought and discussion, I've decided to add a forum system back into the website. This should become available sometime in the next two or three days. I'm probably going to purchase a copy of the Xenforo forum software since it seems to have a richer feature set than phpBB and has some features that I'm going to want.

The reason I'm adding it is mostly to facilitate communications with site users, and to provide a private venue for discussions among folks with editor privileges on the site.

Thanks for your patience while we worked our way through issues surrounding this, and my decided lack of enthusiasm for the project, which is now mostly overcome.

Doug - your efforts are much appreciated.

It's the best forum software out there in my opinion. I run serval forums with it, have done so for years. Let me know if you need any help setting things up.

Here's a sample forum, it's a model railroad one that typically has about 100 concurrent users online most of the time. https://modelrailroadforums.com/forum/index.php

The bulk of steamlocomotive.info is hosted at Media3.net on a Cold Fusion Enterprise server and I'm very happy with it. Unfortunately php hosting from them was about $230/month. So I purchased php hosting from Godaddy for $9/month. And forums.steamlocomotive.info points there. I haven't got the software fully installed yet but I'm working on it and have not taken up drinking as a hobby yet...

Things may be different of late, but Godaddy subcontracted web hosting. When I took over as webmaster for a few clients on Godaddy, I had to constantly keep close tabs on the root directories for injected nefarious files. It wasn't long until I got them moved to a different hosting company and never had a problem since. That was my experience, yours may be different.

I will certainly do that, though I've not experienced it with other hosting on Godaddy in the past. I've got the Xenforo software uploaded, and am working on the installation. Currently preparing the MySQL connection for the software, but will finish that up tomorrow.

Warm regards to site visitors.

Well, got the database created, db user created as per Xenforo's instructions. The installation process ran as far as creating all the tables in the database, then configured the web hosting so that nothing runs. Don't know why. Opened a trouble ticket with Xenforo, which is in England. Don't know when I'll get a response.

ahh…recalculating….


Doug,
Sigh and thank you for your patience and persistence.
~Wesley

Well, I got it installed successfully, zero thanks to Xenforo, whose sole response was "Find another hosting company", and many thanks to Godaddy's AI Guide that patiently examined what I was doing and came up with an clean (and interesting solution). The software is now functional. I am in the process of learning how to configure (and administer) this software, but I think it is going to be really, really nice. I'm taking the rest of the day off to decompress, calm down (and be silly).

Warm regards to all.

You got it working on a $9 a month hosting plan? With the ability to create databases and all of that stuff that goes with it? Looks glaringly at my $2K per year dedicated server lease...

I had no idea that was even possible. I'm going to assume mine maybe has just a bit more bandwidth and capacity for multiple users etc, but hey, if it's working, it's working. Well done.

50 GB of storage, no bandwidth limits. Can create up to 10 databases. Has cPanel with all the tools. My initial installation failed for reasons unknown. I cleaned out the install directory, reuploaded and ran the install and it worked fine. Anyhoo, thanks for the recommendation. I'm still wading through their documentation, trying to understand styles and themes and such.

I've gone ahead and activated the Forum button on the top of the main page of the site. Feel free to register for an account if you wish. The forums appearance will change in the next few days as we apply a theme and styles to it. The functionality will remain the same.

Well...everything is more or less working, so I guess I'll stick with it for a while. Sigh.

Just let me push this thread on top again ;-)