In an earlier post I gave a brief overview on 9 of the most popular platforms people use for their fansites.
In this post I’ll begin to look at these different platforms in a bit more detail, starting with…Forums & Message Boards!
Pros – Forums are great for community building – allowing members to contribute to threads and posts. Most of the modern forum options come with a plethora of moderation tools, social group features and additional enhancements.
Forums are great for communities, large or small. The best boards are usually ranked well within their niche by the major search engines. Forums are therefore excellent for content building, moreover they allows fans with common interests to come together and share their fandom by through threads, posts, private and social messaging and profile comments. Some people believe that forums are not worth the hassle, with blogs and other social platforms still on the rise. However, many of the best forum options integrate many of these social features. Invariably it will always come down to personal preference and the objective you have for your fansite, but rest assured there are a large number of fans who prefer to share their thoughts on forums. I believe this to be partly due to the way forums are structured, along with the ‘information culture’ that forums offer – but more on this in another post.
Cons – In my experience, the biggest downside, if you will, to running your fansite with a forum script is that forums invariably take a lot of work to get off the ground. Blogs take just as much work, but the format of blogs is such that they can double as a journal – whereas in the beginning of a forum you may find that you’re talking to yourself in many empty rooms – psychologically forums and blogs differ on this level. That said, there are effective ways in which to promote your forums to bring in activity (which we will explore in later articles), and the bottom line is that you have to be prepared put the work in to get the results – that’s a fact of life. 
Forum Software
- vBulletin – vBulletin is my forum software of choice – the array of useful features is amazing, not to mention the extensive list of modifications that are available. Such features extend and enhance the scope of what vBulletin can do. Don’t be fooled by the ‘out-of-the-box’ default look – vBulletin allows for great customisation. However it’s the moderation tools which really set vBulletin apart – whether it’s dealing with troublesome spam or member promotions, vBulletin allows you to create an organized and powerful fansite. It’s not the easiest to use if you’re just starting out, but the learning curve is good if you have some idea of how message boards work. vBulletin isn’t free – it costs $100 for a yearly leased license or $180 for an owned license, which you can use indefinitely.
- IPB (Invision Power Board). IPB is a solid alternative to vBulletin. They offer many of the features vBulletin offer (and a few others). The new IP.Board 3 includes ‘friendly URL’s’ (good for search engines) – an impressive addition. The price might be a sticking point for some, with the self-hosted license costing $149.99 and the Community Suit costing a whopping $249.99 (although this includes the blog and gallery features). So it’s not cheap!
- Phpbb – One of the longest standing open source forum options. Whilst I’ve never been a massive user of Phpbb, it does serve many forum owners well.
- Mybb – I’ve used Mybb for a couple of my forums – for free software, you can’t really go wrong with Mybb, especially if you’re just starting out with your fansite, or if you can’t afford to fork out for a vBulletin or IPB licence. In my experience, Mybb isn’t as ‘slick’ or comprehensive as some of the market leaders, but it has developed well over the years and continues to offer new features. Ease of use is also one of the big pulls for Mybb admins.
There are of course many other forum software options – SMF is another fairly popular product that I didn’t mention. In later posts I will no doubt explore each of the many forum platforms in relation to fansite creation and management.
